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Samuel Egerton Brydges : Arthur Fitz-Albini: a Novel

'We have got Fitz-Albini; my father has bought it against my private wishes, for it does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only one of Egerton's works of which his family are ashamed. That these scruples, however, do not at all interfere with my reading it, you will easily believe. We have neither of us yet finished the first volume. My father is disappointed - I am not, for I expected nothing better.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

James Boswell : Tour to the Hebrides

'We have got Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, and are to have his Life of Johnson.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady

'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

Thomas Sherlock : [sermons]

'She read sermons and other religious books, her favourite sermons being "professedly practical", without too much "Regeneration and Conversion", especially Sherlock's'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Laetitia Matilda Hawkins : [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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'Her favourite novels included those of Burney, whom she thought "the very best of English novelists", and of Richardson, especially "Sir Charles Grandison".'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'In 1753 Catherine Talbot stayed with the Berkeley family and participated enthusiastically in readings of "Sir Charles Grandison".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'Susan Sibbald knew Scottish shepherd Wully Carruthers who was a fellow-subscriber to the circulating library at Melrose, but while she borrowed Ann Radcliffe, he read "Ancient and Modern History", though he did sometimes read a "novel or nonsense buke", like "Sir Charles Grandison". He had also read Alan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd", and contrasted it ironically with the life of a real shepherd.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wully Carruthers Print: Book

James Boswell : Tour of the Hebrides

'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

[Madame] de Genlis :

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book

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'.

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies

William Shakespeare : The Sonnets

'read some of the Sonnets of shakspear which are great favourites of mine & lookd into the Poems of Chatterton to see what he says about flowers & have found that he speaks of the Lady smock [quotes from 'The Battle of Hastings'].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

William Collins Collins : 'Odes' [Appears to be a volume of Odes by various authors]

'Read some of the Odes of Collins think them superior to Grays [...] I cannot describe the pleasure I feel in reading them [...] I find in the same Vol Odes by a poet of the name of Oglivie [...] they appear to me to be bold intruders to claim company with Gray and Collins'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

John Hamilton Reynolds : The Garden of Florence

'Began to read again the 'Garden of Florence' by Reynolds it is a beautiful simple tale' [describes other poems in vol].

William Robert Spencer : To The Lady Anne Hamilton

'Verses / Spencer' 'Too late I staid, forgive the crime; /...' [transcript of poem]

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom

Thomas James Mathias : The Pursuits of Literature; A Satirical Poem

Engaged in a 2nd perusal of the Pursuits of Literature and the Monthly Magazine

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. 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

Benjamin Disraeli :

'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

Benjamin Thompson : Philosophical Papers: being a collection of memoir

I have been reading lately "Maunders Geography" and working a little at "Thompson's Natural Philosophy["]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book

James Shirley : The Gratefull Servant. A Comedie...

Aunt sup'd with me. Read 4 Acts of 'The Gratefull Servant'. Bed 12. More amused and quiet than of late.

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

William Shakespeare : Double Falsehood; Or, the Distrest Lovers... writt

Read 'Double Falshood' a play of Shakespear's never acted till this winter. I think it a poor one for his. Bed 12.

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

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

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay on the first page of his copy of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'An admirable opening scene, whatever the French critics may say. It at once puts us thoroughly in possession of the state of the two families.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay by the passage about the biting of the thumbs in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'This is not what would be commonly called fine; but I would give any six plays of Rowe for it.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay by the scene in the street beginning with Mercutio's lines: 'Where the devil should this Romeo be? / Came he not home to- night?' in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'This is the free conversation of lively, high-spirited young gentlemen.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay by the commencement of the third act in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'Mercutio, here, is beyond the reach of anybody but Shakespeare.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay by the the lines 'Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night's revels'in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'This is as fine an instance of presentiment as I remember in poetry. It throws a sadness over all the gaiety that follows, and prepares us for the catastrophe.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Marginalia by Macaulay at the close of the Third Act of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]: 'Very fine is the way in which Juliet at once withdraws her whole confidence from the nurse without disclosing her feelings'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

[Editorial commentary on Macaulay's marginalia]: 'When [...] the poor child commits her life to the hands of Friar Lawrence, Macaulay remarks on the wonderful genius with which the poet delineates a timid, delicate girl of fourteen excited and exalted to an act of desperate courage.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay 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

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Commenced Boswell's Life of Johnson and was much pleased with it.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Dined at five - went on with Boswell having discontinued it, since Saturday January 23rd.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'There is a pencil note in his copy of "Paradise Lost": "Had to write 500 lines of this for being caught reading "King Lear" in class."'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Thomas Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'We spent a whole term on the first two scenes of "The Tempest".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book

William Seward : Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Persons, Chiefly o

Reading "Anedotes of Some Remarkable Persons Chiefly of The Present and Two Preceding Centuries'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book

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]

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

Marcus Antoninus :

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

Samuel Pepys :

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book

Adam Smith : The Wealth of Nations

'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

William Shakespeare :

'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

James Boswell :

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Pyke Print: Book

Thomas Second Lord Lyttelton : 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

Miguel de Cervantes Savedra : Don Quixote

"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

William Collins : An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland

"[in 29.10.1828 letter to Alexander Dyce] ... W[ordsworth] recalls that 'in 1788 the Ode was first printed from Dr Carlyle's copy, with Mr Mackenzie's supplemental lines - and was extensively circulated through the English newspapers, in which I remember to have read it with great pleasure upon its first appearance.'"

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Newspaper

William Shakespeare :

'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

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

William Shakespeare :

'[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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

"Christopher Wordsworth Jr. wrote of W[ordsworth]: 'The week before he took his degree he passed his time in reading Clarissa Harlowe.'"

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Thomas Clarkson : Portraiture of Quakerism as taken from a view of the Moral Education, Descriptions, Peculiar Customs, Religious Principles, Political and Civil Oeconomy and Character of the Society of Friends

Dorothy Wordsworth describes receiving only 'two last volumes' of 'Mr Clarkson's Book': 'we may yet have to wait a fortnight or three weeks for the other [received by William Wordsworth at a separate address (Basil Montagu's)] ... We have determined not to read the Book till we can begin at the beginning, so I have done little more than turn over the leaves ... I think it is a very well-looking Book, with enough of stuff in each page, not too large margins, and a good type. As to the matter, it looks very nice, (I have heard you say that you can judge of a book in turning over the leaves) and I have read some very sweetly written bits.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

Thomas Clarkson : Portraiture of Quakerism as taken from a View of the Moral Education, Descriptions, Peculiar Customs, Religious Principles, Political and Civil OEconomy and Character of the Society of Friends.

'W[illia]m [Wordsworth] has read most of Mr Clarkson's book and has been much pleased, but he complains of the second volume being exceedingly disfigured by perpetual use of the word tract.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady

'Clarissa Harlowe was not more interesting [than Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the African Slave-Trade] when I first read it at 14 years of age.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

Thomas Clarkson : History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, The

'We had read his [Thomas Clarkson's] book ... William [Wordsworth] I believe made a few remarks upon paper, but he had not time for much criticism, and in fact having only one perusal of the work he was too much interested.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : [poems]

William Wordsworth describes coach journey from London, having already observed that the coach guard was a former grocer on his first day in the new job: 'At Lancaster I happened to mention Grasmere in the hearing of one of the Passengers, who asked me immediately if one Wordsworth did not live there. I answered, "Yes." - "He has written," said he, "some very beautiful Poems; The Critics do indeed cry out against them, and condemn them as over simple, but for my part I read them with great pleasure, they are natural and true." - This man was also a Grocer.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: [a grocer] Anon

William Wordsworth : White Doe of Rylstone, The

'In compliance with frequent entreaties I took the MSS [of The White Doe of Rylstone] to [Charles] Lamb's to read it, or part of it, one evening. There unluckily I found [William] Hazlitt and his Beloved [Sarah Stoddart] ... though I had the Poem in my hand I ... absolutely refused, to read it. But as they were very earnest in entreating me, I at last consented to read one Book ... '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : White Doe of Rylstone, The

'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.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Serial / periodical

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

[Macaulay's marginalia by the conversation in the street between Brutus and Cassius, in the First Act of Julius Caesar] "These two or three pages are worth the whole French drama ten times over."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

[Macaulay's marginalia at the end of Julius Caesar] "The last scenes are huddled up, and affect me less than Plutarch's narrative. But the working up of Brutus by Cassius, the meeting of the conspirators, the stirring of the mob by Antony, and (above all,) the dispute and reconciliation of the two generals, are things far beyond the reach of any other poet that ever lived."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

[Macaulay's marginalia by the lines "Let me have men about me that are fat/ Sleek headed men, and such as sleep o' nights" in Julius Caesar] "Plutarch's hint is admirably expanded here".

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

G.W.M. Reynolds : The Mysteries of London

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: Print: Serial / periodical

G.W.M. Reynolds : The Mysteries of the Court of London

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Serial / periodical

G.W.M. Reynolds : Reynolds's Miscellany

Henry Mayhew interviews a crossing sweeper: "Sometimes, after I get home, I read a book, if I can borrow one. What do I read? Well, novels, when I can get them. What did I read last night? Well, Reynolds's Miscellany; before that I read the Pilgrim's Progress. I have read it three times over; but there's always something new in it."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Serial / periodical

William Shakespeare :

Henry Mayhew interviews a penny mouse-trap maker (cripple): "I found books often lull my pain... I can't afford them no, for I have no wish to incur any extraneous expense, while the weight of the labour lies on my family more than it does on myself. Over and over again, when I have been in acute pain with my thigh, a scientific book, or a work on history, or a volume of travels, would carry my thoughts far away ...I always had love of solid works. For an hour's light reading, I have often turned to a work of imagination, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare's plays; but I prefer science to poetry... I think it is solely due to my taste for mechanics and my love of reading scientific books that I am able to live so comfortably as I do in my affliction."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 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

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

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

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

Wiliam Wordsworth : 'The Solitary Reaper'

'[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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book, Serial / periodical, either in penny numbers or as volume

William Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: group of London thieves Print: Book, Serial / periodical, either as penny numbers or in volume

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

'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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book

Thomas a Kempis : The Imitation of Christ

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

'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

William Wordsworth : Fidelity

Transcription of William Wordsworh, "Fidelity" in letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, 2 March 1806 (first four stanzas as in 1807 edition, followed by further eight varying from these).

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : Star-Gazers

Transcription of William Wordsworth, "Star-Gazers" appears in letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, 15 November 1806.

Unknown

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth

William Wordsworth : The Force of Prayer

Transcription of William Wordsworth, 'The Force of Prayer' appears in letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to Jane Marshall, 18 October 1807.

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : Convention of Cintra, The

William Wordsworth to Daniel Stuart, 'Sunday Night, June 4th [1809]': 'Nothing but vexation seems to attend me in this affair of the Pamphlet [The Convention of Cintra]. Mr De Quincey according to my request sent me down ten stitched Pamphlets ... and it was not till today that I discovered that in two copies of those stitched the page which was cancelled remains as it first stood, the corrected leaf not having been substituted.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth : Introduction to Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson, Rector of East and West Wretham, in the County of Norfolk and Chaplain to the Marquis of Huntly

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 18 Novembr [1809]: 'Sara [Hutchinson] has been kept almost constantly busy in transcribing ... For William [Wordsworth] she has been transcribing the introduction to a collection of prints to be published by Mr. Wilkinson of Thetford (of which I believe you know the history as your husband's name is down among those of the subscribers). I hope you will be interested with William's part of the work (he has only finished the general introduction, being unable to do the rest until he has seen the prints). It is the only regular and I may say scientific account of the present and past state and appearance of the country that has yet appeared.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson Manuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare :

'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

James Thomson : The Seasons

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book

William Hickling Prescott : The Conquest of Mexico

'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

William Hickling Prescott : The Conquest of Peru

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book

William Morris :

[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

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Foley Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Daffodils'

'[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

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Chaim Lewis 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

Samuel Smiles : Self Help

'Blatchford, once he read it carefully found [Samuel Smiles's Self Help] "one of the most delightful and invigorating books it has been my happy fortune to meet with".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Peel Glanville Blatchford Print: Book

Samuel Smiles : Self Help

'George Gregory offers a case study in the importance of Self-Help. His father was an illiterate Somsert 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

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

Miguel Cervantes : Don Quixote

Transcribed from title page to edition of Don Quixote in 30 May 1813 letter from William Wordsworth to Basil Montagu: 'The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant / Don Quixote of the Mancha / Written in Spanish by Michael Cervantes / Translated in to English / By Thomas Shelton / And now printed Verbatim from the 4to / Edit: of 1620 / With a curious set of new Cuts, from / the French of Coypel / London, printed for D. Midwinter &c. / M.DCCXL.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Thomas Clarkson : Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 4 October [1813]: 'I was resolved not to write until I had read your Husband's Book, of which literally I have not even now read ten pages, from want of time to read anything.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: BookManuscript: Letter

Samuel Rogers : Poems

William Wordsworth to Samuel Rogers, 5 May 1814: 'I have to thank you for a Present of your Volume of Poems, received some time since, through the hands of Southey. I have read it with great pleasure.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Yarrow Visted

Writing to Catherine Clarkson, 11 November 1814, Dorothy Wordsworth gives transcription of version of William Wordsworth, "Yarrow Visited".

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : ?Excursion, The

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 11 November 1814: 'Your anecdote of Tom [?Thomas Clarkson] that he sate up all night reading William's poem gave me as much pleasure as anything I have heard of the effect produced by it ... It speaks highly in favour of Tom's feeling and enthusiasm that he was so wrought upon.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom ?Clarkson Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 18 February 1815: 'William and Mary and little Willy paid a visit to old Mrs Knott yesterday with the Ex[cursio]n in hand, William intending to read to the old Lady the history of the Grasmere Knight. She could not hear his loud voice; but understood the story very well when her Niece read it, and was greatly delighted. Today they have returned the Book, and poor Miss K has written a complimentary but alas! unintelligible note ... she concludes by saying ... that she had written to Kendal to order the Book. She says she had been told by Mrs Green and others that it was above their capacity, and of course above hers, but what she had read had given her infinite delight. I tell William that the family made a trading voyage of it. Certainly the Book would never have been bought by Miss K. if Willy and his Father and Mother had stayed quietly at home.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Knott Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Fairy Queen, The

Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 18 February 1815: 'It is 11 o'clock. William has been reading the Fairy Queen - he has laid aside his Book and Mary has set about putting her nightcap.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : extracts from The Excursion

Dorothy Wordsworth to Sara Hutchinson, 16 March 1815: 'William has made a conquest of holy Hannah [More], though she had not seen the Book [The Excursion], had seen nothing but the extracts in the Edinbrough [sic] Review. She intends to buy it; but is waiting for a cheaper Edition.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah More Print: Serial / periodical

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 31 December 1815: 'In reading the 3rd Book of the Excursion last night what a pang did I feel for our poor widowed Friend Mrs Luff when I came to these lines "Oh never let the Wretched, if a choice / Be left him, trust the freight of his distress / To a long voyage on the silent deep! ... "'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

G.W.M. Reynolds : The Mysteries of the Court of London

Evidence of Abel Heywood to Select Committee considering abolition of newspaper stamps: "This 'Court of London' I consider is a test of the taste of the readers generally; I think between this 'Court of London' and the others [other cheap publications] there is a very wide line of distinction; I have read some portion of it, and it draws scenes of profligacy as strongly as it is possible for any writer to do, and the feelings are excited to a very high pitch by it; indeed some look upon it as an indecent publication; but it is not in reality an indecent publication because I do not believe that any words appear that are vulgar; but certainly the language is of a more exciting kind and directed to excite the passions of its readers."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Abel Heywood Print: Serial / periodical

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

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

[Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Antony and Cleopatra, by an editorial note by Steevens, which reminds the reader that Cleopatra's story of the salt fish on Antony's hook was taken from North's Plutarch]: "Yes, but how happily introduced, and with what skill and spirit worked up by Shakespeare!"

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

[Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Coriolanus, by a note by Warburton regarding the composition of the Senate] "Absurd! Who knows anything about the usages of the Senate, and the privileges of the Tribunes, in Coriolanus's time?"

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

[Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Coriolanus, by a note by Warburton regarding the history of the Roman Consular Government]: "Well! but there had certainly been elective magistracies in Rome before the expulsion of the kings, and there might have been canvassing. Shakspeare [sic] cared so little about historical accuracy that an editor who notices expressions, which really are not grossly inaccurate, is unpardonable."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

[Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Coriolanus, by a note by Warburton regarding the creation of the first Censor, which suggests that Shakespeare had misread his authorities]: "This undoubtedly was a mistake, and what DOES it matter?"

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

[Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Coriolanus, on the last page]: "A noble play. As usual, Shakspeare [sic] had thumbed his translation of Plutarch to rags."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Thomas Clarkson : letter to Mr Wakefield

Dorothy Wordsworth describing progress of electioneering in Kendal to Sara Hutchinson, 24 March 1818: 'This morning ... [William Crackenthorp] called ... just before he was setting off with [Henry] B[rougham] on his canvass [he] ran down to us in out-of-breath haste to read us a letter just received from Mr Clarkson to Mr Wakefield [refusing support to Lowthers in election] ... it was a beautiful, a delightful letter ... after he had read the letter he hurried off ... '

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Crackenthorp

Thomas Clarkson :

William Wordsworth to Viscount Lowther, [27 March 1818]: 'I should at this moment determine to go over to Lowther tomorrow, did I not think that I may be more useful to the cause, by remaining at home for the purpose of preparing an answer to a Letter of Mr Clarkson to the Kendal Comm: of Brougham, which will appear in the Chronicle tomorrow; and which I am sure will injure your interests ... The original of the Letter I have seen, but could not procure a copy. - It was shewn me by Mr Crackenthorp [of opposing party interest] with the high-flying expression, "We reckon it as good as 50 votes!"'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter

Thomas Clarkson :

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 30 March 1818: 'Mr Clarkson's letter [refusing support to Lowther interest in Westmorland elections] was published in yesterday's paper; and I have read it with delight, as an admirable letter and a faithful picture of his noble mind, but I feel assured that it will serve a cause which he would not wish to serve if he were acquainted with all its bearings.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Newspaper

William Wordsworth : letter to Revd. John Russell

William Wordsworth to Christopher Wordsworth, 1 January 1819: 'Mr Monkhouse will probably have shewn you the copy of Mr Russel's Letter [on Madras method of education], as I learn he has already done of mine to him ... '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Rogers : Human Life, A Poem

William Wordsworth to Francis Wrangham, 19 February 1819: '[Samuel] Rogers read me his Poem when I was in Town about 2 months ago; but I have heard nothing of it since.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers

William Wordsworth : River Duddon, A Series of Sonnets, The

Lord Lonsdale to William Wordsworth, 1 May 1820: 'I have read the Sonnets on the Duddon, and the notes annexed to them with great Pleasure ... the perusal of them afforded me infinite satisfaction.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lonsdale Print: Book

Thomas Clarkson : sermon

Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 3 September [1820]: 'How admirable and to me astonishing the ardour and industry of your good husband - to think of writing a sermon to be read to his Family on the same evening!'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Clarkson

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

Samuel Rogers : Jacqueline

'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

Thomas Clarkson : History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, The

'C[oleridge] read vol. 1 [of Thomas Clarkson, History ... of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade] in proof in early Feb. 1808 ... '

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

Guillaume de Saluste Dubartas : Dubartas his Second Weeke: Babylon. The Second Part of the Second Day of the II. Weeke

'C[oleridge]was ... reading ... [Dubartas his Second Weeke] in 1807.'

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

Guillaume de Saluste Dubartas : Dubartas his Second Weeke: Babylon. The Second Part of the Second Day of the II. Weeke

'Southey had certainly read Dubartas by 2 March 1815 ... '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

M. G. Lewis : Felon, The

'In a letter to D[orothy] W[ordsworth] of 10 March 1801, J[ohn] W[ordsworth] added that "Mr Lewis's poem [The Felon] is the most funny one I ever read ... "'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

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

William Shakespeare :

'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

William Wordsworth :

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

[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

William Shakespeare :

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson 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

Samuel Richardson : The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, a selection from the original manuscripts

"On 5 Jan 1806 D[orothy] W[ordsworth] told Lady Beaumont; "'My Brother chanced to meet with Richardson's letters at a Friend's house, and glancing over them, read those written by Mrs Klopstock, he was exceedingly affected by them and said it was impossible to read them without loving the woman.'"

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, a selection from the original manuscripts

'Robert Southey on "The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson" in letter to C. W. Williams Wynn, 27 November 1804: "Richardson's correspondence I should think worse than anything of any celebrity that ever was published ... The few letters of Klopstock's Wife must be excepted from this censure: they are ... very affecting; indeed the notice of her death, coming ... after that sweet letter in which she dwells upon her hopes of happiness from that child whose birth destroyed her, came upon me like an electric shock."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

William Roscoe : The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth

'On 29 Nov. 1805, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] told Lady Beaumont: "I am reading Rosco's Leo the tenth - I have only got through the first Chapter which I find exceedingly interesting. The whole Book can scarcely be so interesting to me."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Roscoe : The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth

' ... by 11 Jan. 1806 ... [Southey] was reading ... [Roscoe, "Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth"] a second time [having read it to review it in 1805]: "I am come to Roscoe," he told Henry Herbert Southey, "whose book rises much in my estimation upon a second perusal."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

William Sotheby : I knew a gentle maid

'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: Book

William Sotheby : I knew a gentle maid

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

Thomas Wilkinson : To My Thrushes, Blackbirds, etc.

'On 7 July 1809, W[ordsworth] told Thomas Wilkinson that "Mr Coleridge showed me a little poem of yours upon your Birds which gave us all very great pleasure."'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family

William Hutchinson : History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, The

'At some time between late April and 17 Dec. 1799, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] copied the epitaph of Sir George Vane at the parish church of Long Newton, Durham, as published in [William] Hutchinson, [History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham] into D[ove] C[ottage] MS 20.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Harness : unknown

Byron to William Harness, 11 February 1808: 'I ... remember being favoured with the perusal of many of your compositions....'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Thomas Thompson, from a family of Lancashire weavers, grew up with tales of Robin Hood and the Black Hole of Calctta, as well as an abridged Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress. So when a clergyman asked him why he read the Bible, he innocently replied "that I liked the battle scenes". That answer got him in serious trouble'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Thompson Print: Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Blackstone : Commentaries on the Laws of England

I now read Blackstone, Hale's Common Law, several other Law Books, and much biography. This course of reading was continued for several years until the death of my landlady.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book

Adam Smith : Wealth of Nations

The whole or nearly the whole of the eight months when I was not employed was not lost. I read many volumes in history, voyages, and travels, politics, law and Philosophy. Adam Smith and Locke and especially Humes Essays and Treatises, these latter I read two or three times over, this reading was of great service to me, it caused me to turn in upon myself and examine myself in a way which I should not otherwise have done. It was this which laid the solid foundation of my future prosperity, and completed the desire I had always had to acquire knowledge.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place Print: Book

John Cam Hobhouse : [packet]

Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 26 January 1815: 'Your packet hath been perused ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Letter

Giambattista Casti : Novelle Amorose

Byron to Pryce Gordon, [?June 1816]: '... I cannot tell you what a treat your gift of Casti has been to me; I have almost got him by heart. I had read his "Animali Parlanti," but I think these "Novelle" much better ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

Giambattista Casti : Animali Parlante

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

Benjamin Constant : Adolphe

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

Salomon Gessner : The Death of Abel

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

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book

James Wedderburn Webster : Waterloo and Other Poems

Byron to John Murray, 5 October 1816: 'I have read the last E[dinburgh] R[eview] they are very severe on the Germans -- and their idol Goethe -- I have also read Wedderburne Webster -- and Ilderim -- and the Pamphleteer. -- --'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'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

James Wedderburn Webster : Waterloo and Other Poems

Byron to Douglas Kinnaird, 24 February 1817: 'I saw in Switzerland in the autumn the poems of [James Wedderburn] Webster ... Amongst the ingredients of this volume I was not a little astonished to find an epitaph upon myself -- the desert of which I would postpone for a few years at least ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Advertisement, Book, Serial / periodical

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

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 ...'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron

John Cam Hobhouse : Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold

Byron to John Cam Hobhouse, 30 September 1818: "' saw the other day by accident your "Historical &c." -- the Essay [on Italian literature, actually by Ugo Foscolo] is perfect ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson : The Rambler

'[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, Serial / periodical, might have been the serial versions or, more likely, bound as a book

[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

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

Samuel Richardson :

[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

John Cam Hobhouse : [speeches]

Byron to Douglas Kinnaird, 26 October 1820: 'I have read lately several speeches of Hobhouse in taverns -- his Eloquence is better than his company.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

'Shakespeare provided a political script for J.R. Clynes, the son of an Irish farm labourer, who rose from the textile mills of Oldham to become deputy leader of the House of Commons. In his youth he drew inspiration from the "strange truth" he found in Twelfth Night: "Be not afraid of greatness". ("What a creed! How it would upset the world if men lived up to it, I thought") Urged on by a Cooperative Society librarian, he worked through the plays and discovered they were about people who "had died for their beliefs. Wat Tyler and Jack Cade seemed heroes". Reading Julius Caesar, "the realisation came suddenly to me that it was a mighty political drama" about class struggle, "not just an entertainment"... Elected to Parliament in 1906, he read A Midsummer Night's Dream while awaiting the returns'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Robert Clynes Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Robert Clynes Print: Book

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Robert Clynes Print: Book

Samuel Rogers :

'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

Samuel Pepys : 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: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book

William Wordsworth : unknown

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society Print: Book

Amelia Hutchison Stirling : Monsieur le Comte

'Miss Hutchison Stirling is I believe about to submit to you a little story which I read at her request some time ago and in which I thought there was great promise especially in one character.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Manuscript: Book in MS

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

William Roscoe : The Life of Lorenzo de Medici, called the Magnificent OR The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth

Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 7 January 1821: 'Read Spence, and turned over Roscoe, to find a passage I have not found. 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

Samuel Johnson : The Vanity of Human Wishes

Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 9 January 1821: 'Dined. Read Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes" ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : 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

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

William Lisle Bowles : various

Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 5 February 1821: 'Read some of Bowles's dispute about Pope, with all the replies and rejoinders. Perceive that my name has been lugged into the controversy ...'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical

John Cam Hobhouse :

Byron to John Murray, 24 November 1821, regarding John Cam Hobhouse's offence at his MS Memoirs: "Is there anything in the M.S.S. that could be personally obnoxious to himself [John Cam Hobhouse]? ... If there were any ... even that would not sanction the tone of his letter, which I showed to one or two English & Irish friends of mine here -- who were perfectly astonished ..."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: friends of Byron Manuscript: Letter

Benjamin Constant : Adolphe

Byron to the Countess of Blessington, on Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, 6 May 1823: 'The first time I ever read it ... was at the desire of Madame de Stael ...'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

'Later in the month (30 November), Grace writes that she is "reading Henry V to M. and R. [Margaret and Rose] in the evenings".'

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

William Shakespeare :

'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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book

Thomas a Kempis : On The Imitation of Christ

Rose Macaulay had a 'craze' 'for the ascetic Thomas a Kempis's meditations and rule of conduct, On The Imitation of Christ, which her godmother gave her when she was 13'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book

John Cam Hobhouse : Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold

Byron to Scrope Berdmore Davies, 7 December 1818: 'We have all here been very much pleased with Hobhouse's book on Italy -- some part of it the best he ever wrote ... '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book

William Harness : unknown

Byron to Wililiam Harness, 11 February 1808: 'I ... remember being favoured [while at school] with the perusal of many of your compositions ...'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown

James Thomson : The Seasons

'[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'.

William Shakespeare : King John

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 29 May 1800: 'In the morning worked in the garden a little, read King John.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard the Second

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 30 August 1800: 'I read a little of Boswell's Life of Johnson.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : To Joanna

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 1 September 1800: 'We walked in the wood by the Lake. W. read Joanna, and the Firgrove, to Coleridge ... The morning was delightful ...'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth : The Firgrove

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 1 September 1800: 'We walked in the wood by the Lake. W. read Joanna, and the Firgrove, to Coleridge ... The morning was delightful ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 14 September 1800: 'Read Boswell in the house in the morning, and after dinner under the bright yellow leaves of the orchard.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 14 September 1800: 'Read Boswell in the house in the morning, and after dinner under the bright yellow leaves of the orchard.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 6 October 1800: 'After tea read The Pedlar.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth

William Wordsworth : Ruth

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 22 October 1800: 'Wm. read after supper, Ruth etc.; Coleridge Christabel.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth : Point Rash Judgement

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 6 November 1800: 'Wm. somewhat better [having been suffering from piles] -- read Point Rash Judgement.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

?James Thomson : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Hutchinson

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 16 November 1801: '... [William] is now, at 7 o'clock, reading Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 18 November 1801: 'We sate in the house in the morning reading Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 24 November 1801: 'After tea Wm. read Spenser, now and then a little aloud to us.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene (Canto I)

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: Mary Hutchinson Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: '[while Mary Hutchinson walked to Ambleside] I stayed at home and clapped the small linen. Wm. sate beside me, and read The Pedlar.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: 'In the afternoon ... I mended Wm.'s stockings while he was reading The Pedlar.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Letter

William Wordsworth : Descriptive Sketches

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, about how she spent Saturday, 23 January 1802: '[after walking in cold] O how comfortable and happy we felt ourselves, sitting by our own fire ... We talked about the Lake of Como, read in the Descriptive Sketches, looked about us, and felt that we were happy.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth

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

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 7 February, 1802: 'We sate by the fire, and ... read the Pedlar, thinking it done; but lo! though Wm. could find fault with no one part of it, it was uninteresting, and must be altered.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

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

William Wordsworth : The Prelude

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 10 February, 1802: '... we read the first part of the poem [ie The Prelude] and were delighted with it ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy and William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : The Recluse

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 13 February, 1802: 'William read parts of his Recluse aloud to me.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : Peter Bell

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 22 February, 1802: ' ... Mr. Simpson came in. Wm. began to read Peter Bell to him, so I carried my writing to the kitchen fire.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

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

William Wordsworth : Lyrical Ballads

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 4 March 1802: 'After Tea I worked and read the L[yrical]. B[allads]., enchanted with the Idiot Boy.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Lyrical Ballads

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 5 March 1802: '... read the L[yrical]. B[allads]., got into sad thoughts, tried at German, but could not go on. Read L[yrical]. B[allads]. '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Lyrical Ballads

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 5 March 1802: '... read the L[yrical]. B[allads]., got into sad thoughts, tried at German, but could not go on. Read L[yrical]. B[allads]. '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 9 March 1802: 'We sate by the fire in the evening, and read The Pedlar over.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

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

William Wordsworth : The Butterfly (and other poems)

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 14 March 1802: 'Mr. Simpson came in just as [William Wordsworth] was finishing the Poem [The Butterfly]. After he was gone I wrote it down and the other poems, and I read them all over to him.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : poems

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 15 March 1802: 'We sate reading the poems, and I read a little German.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Edmund Spenser : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 16 March 1802: 'After dinner I read him [William Wordsworth] to sleep. I read Spenser while he leaned upon my shoulder.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [poem]

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 17 March 1802: 'I went and sate with W. and walked backwards and forwards in the orchard till dinner time. He read me his poem.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : [poem]

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 17 March 1802: '... we sate a while ... [in the orchard]. I left ... [William Wordsworth], and he nearly finished the poem ... I went to bed before him -- he came down to me, and read the Poem to me in bed.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : The Pedlar

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 20 March 1802: 'After tea Wm. read The Pedlar.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : The Robin and the Butterfly

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 18 April 1802: 'I went to drink tea at Luff's ... William met me at Rydale ... We sate up late ... He met me with the conclusion of the poem of the Robin [ie "The Robin and the Butterfly"]. I read it to him in bed. We left out some lines.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

Adam Ferguson : Life of Ferguson

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 21 April 1802: I went to bed after dinner, could not sleep, went to bed again. Read Ferguson's life and a poem or two -- fell asleep for 5 minutes and awoke better.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Prothalamium

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 25 April 1802: We spent the morning in the orchard -- read the Prothalamium of Spenser.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 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: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet

William Shakespeare : A Lover's Complaint

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 5 May 1802, 'I read The Lover's Complaint to Wm. in bed, and left him composed.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 8 May 1802, 'We sowed the Scarlet Beans in the orchard, and read Henry V. there.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William and Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 15 May 1802, 'It is now 1/2 past 10 ... A very cold and chearless morning ... I read in Shakespeare.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene (Canto I)

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 16 June 1802, 'I read the first Canto of the Fairy Queen to William.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 22 June 1802, 'I read the Midsummer Night's Dream, and began As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 22 June 1802, 'I read the Midsummer Night's Dream, and began As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 23 June 1802, 'It is now 20 minutes past 10 -- a sunshiny morning. I walked to the top of the hill and sate under a wall near John's Grove ... I read a scene or two in As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 1 July 1802, 'In the evening ... we had a nice walk, and afterwards sate by a nice snug fire, and William read Spenser, and I read As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 1 July 1802, 'In the evening ... we had a nice walk, and afterwards sate by a nice snug fire, and William read Spenser, and I read As You Like It.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

William Shakespeare : A Winter's Tale

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 8 July 1802, 'In the afternoon ... I read the Winter's Tale ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

Wee are much obliged to you for sending in Pamela, but I must tell you how it entertained us, Miss Jenny and I cryed most heartily at the Reading of it. I believ it is true, for I verely think I know the Gent. & Lady that occasioned it, indeed it is sweetly wrote & I hope will shew both sexes how right it is to marry upon a good foundation.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Cust Print: Book

William Emerson : The principle of mechanics

Had no time for Eudid but looked into Emerson's mechanics for 1/4 hour, as I wish to prepare myself a little for Dalton's lectures which are to begin on Wednesday and which I mean to attend.

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister

William Emerson : Mechanics or The Principles of Mechanics

had no time for Euclid but looked into Emerson's Mechanics for 1/4 hour as I wish to prepare myself a little for Dalton's lectures which are to begin on Wednesday.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book

William Spence : Tracts on Political Economy: Viz I. Britain Indepe

I have been pleased with some tracts on political Economy by William Alias Entomology Spence esq. F.L.S. Just reprinted since 1806, or 1808, but the reasoning not out of date.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : 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.]

Wiliam Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

[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

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Much Ado about Nothing

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [works]

[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

William Morris : [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

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

William Shakespeare : Shakespeare's Complete Works

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

Jas (James) Hastie : Journal

'By leave of the Colonial Office I have obtained copies of a MS journal, never published or edited, kept by Jas Hastie, the Civil Agent of Governor Farquhar at the court of Radama I. from 1817-1828. The authorities of the Record office have detained the copy a few days in order to authorize them. & I think the Journal would make (with editing) a good book.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: S.P. Oliver Manuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'Seventeen-year-old Ruth Bourne recorded disparaging remarks in her diary about the feeble renderings of Julius Caesar and Macbeth made by members of her [Shakespeare reading] circle in Worcestershire in 1883.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Shakespeare Reading Circle (local) Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Shakespeare Reading Circle (local) Print: Book

William Shakespeare : plays

Ex-Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in the Falloden Papers, on how he spent his time after being deposed from the Cabinet in 1916: ' ... I spent some weeks alone in the country. During that time I read, or re-read, several of Shakespeare's plays.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Edward Grey Print: Book

William Morris : The Haystack in the Floods (and other poems)

'When Wilfrid Blunt joined [William] Morris and his daughter at Kelmscott in 1891, Morris "read us out several of his poems ... including The Haystack in the Floods, but his reading is without the graces of elocution."'

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Morris

William Watson : Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems

'[William Watson] sent a copy [of "Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems"] to [Thomas] Hardy, who replied appreciatively that he had already read it while staying with Edward Clodd ...'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Book

William Watson : Poems

On process of choosing a Poet Laureate from 1892: 'When Gladstone had read [William] Watson's Poems (1892), sent to him by R. H. Hutton, it was with a view to obtaining for him a Civil List pension, not the laureateship.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'[Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland was] an omnivorous reader -- "she could begin the day with reports on technical education in Prussia, continue it with Huxley's 'Life' and Shakespeare, and ... polish off seven love-stories at the same time ..."'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard II

Letter 8/2/1863 - "I'm so thin and hard and metallic that I think sometimes I'm going to turn into the pin that Death bores through the King's crowns - and 'farewell King'."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : The Rambler

" I read to my beloved no 97 of the Rambler written by Richardson, author of those inimitable books Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Richardson : [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]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book

Edmund Spencer : The Faerie Queen

Letter B 24 - 20/10/1858 - "There was some nonsense in your long letter about Britomart and Una. Both of them were in love with the man they were to marry, and loved them."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

Edmund Spencer : The Faerie Queen

Letter B 24 - 20/10/1858 - "There was some nonsense in your long letter about Britomart and Una. Both of them were in love with the man they were to marry, and loved them."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Blunden Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

?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

William Shakespeare : Venus and Adonis

'Then I woke up, switched on the light, & began to read Venus & Adonis. It's pretty stuff - rather like the Death of Procris'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Endymion

"'I have finished Endymion with a painful feeling that the writer [Disraeli] considers all political life as mere play and gambling,' wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tait ..."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: A. C. Tait Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [works]

'[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

William Shakespeare : Measure for Measure

'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

E.M. Forster : Howard's End

'Putting my weakest books to the wall last night I came across a copy of "Howard's End" and had a look into it. But it's not good enough. E.M.Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield 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

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

William Morris : The Defence of Guenevere

Letter H.96 (Beginning of June 1861) ?The Defence of Guenevere by Morris is published by Bell & Daldy.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Wordsworth :

?Do you sympathise with me when I say that the only writer whom I have been able to read with pleasure through this nightmare is Wordsworth? I used not to care for him especially; but now I love him. He is so thoroughly manly & tender & honest as far as his lights go that he seems to me the only consoler. I despise most of your religious people, who cultivate their maudlin humours & despise even more your sentimentalist of the atheist kind; but old W. W. is a genuine human being, whom I respect.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

"It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, The Tempest, in a school edition, prepared I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed The Merchant of Venice, read Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Much Ado about Nothing

" It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, The Tempest, in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces... This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed The Merchant of Venice, read Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

" But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions. Shakespeare now passed into my possession entire, in the shape of a reprint more hideous and more offensive to the eyesight than would in these days appear conceivable..."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Wordsworth :

" But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...I made aquaintance... with Wordsworth, for the exercise of whose magic I was still far too young."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

M.G. Lewis : The Monk

"I stayed at home this morning - not that there is anything new in that - until lunch, and did very little, very easy work - just finishing up a small life. It rained steadily and as I had been at home all yesterday, I could not stand it any longer. So I took a cab to the London Library where I read Lewis's 'Monk' 3 vols in 25 minutes."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

William James : The varieties of religious experience

"I have read your book with keen interest. I always read you with the pleasure of a literary critic recognising (and envying) mastery in the art of putting things."

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : Life of Gray

'Dear Mr Gosse, I hope that I am not impertinent in telling you how heartily I have enjoyed your Gray. I think it one of the most charming biographies I ever read; & I would gladly subscribe to nearly all your criticism, if I had not a feeling that in some points wh. you touch, I am too much of an outsider for any subscription to have much value. The only criticism wh. I might cavil a bit would concern the Bard. I never could feel that the old gentleman ought to derive so much satisfaction from the advent of the Tudor destiny; & Gray?s desire to administer that bit of consolation seems to me to miss the point & rather spoil his design. Still I am fond of the Bard as one is fond of what one has already known by heart.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry VIII

"If it was not enough to have all the Catholic theology suddenly discharged upon one, I have suddenly taken a fancy to read some of the old dramatists, being prompted by Furnivall's society & to puzzle my head about 'stopt lines' as F. J. F. calls them & the share of Fletcher in Henry VIII and the Two Noble Kinsmen.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

Thomas Aquinas :

?I bought the other day a copy of Aquinas & find him very good reading. Only to understand him one ought obviously to read a whole mass of contemporary stuff wh. would swamp me altogether. ? He is a kind of revelation to me ? but what interests one most is to find out how many things have been said over & over again for so many centuries.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

?Boswell showed his genius in setting forth Johnson?s weaknesses as well as his strength. But if Boswell had been Johnson?s brother? I cannot be simply eulogistic if the portrait is to be lifelike; but I find it very hard to speak of defects without either concealing my opinion that they were defects. Or on the other hand, taking a tone of superiority & condescension.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book

Samuel Richardson :

?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

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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

"By what unction of purity our great grand mothers were preserved when they studied Pamela without danger or disgust we know not. There are many points of Richardson?s writings more injurious, because less shocking, to virtue than the sonnets of Rochester. Clarissa is less objectionable, though many of the scenes at Mrs Sinclair?s are such as are wholly unfit for modern readers.?

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert Maturin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

?In his Sir Charles Grandison, the inherent vulgarity, egotism and prolixity of Richardson?s character breakout with a latitude unexampled and uncontrolled. His personages, forever listening to or repeating their own eulogy, forever covering their own selfishness with arrogant humility, preaching forever in a monotonous key of maudlin morality, bowing on hands, and asking the benison of aunts and grandmothers, are now as flat and faded as the figures in an ancient tapestry but, like them, compensate in some measure for the dullness of the design by the fidelity of the costume.?

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Robert 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

Thomas Southern : Complete Plays

"'Putting Shakespeare and his immediate followers out of the way, whom do you think the best dramatist?' 'Otway, Lee and Southern, unquestionably. I speak, perhaps, from an old feeling of attachment, but, nevertheless, from deep conviction? Southern was a sweet and natural poet; he was the Goldsmith of tragedy.'"

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book

William Nicholson : The First Principles of Chemistry

?I will tell you what is going on, that you may see whether you like your daily bill of fare. ? There is a balloon hanging up, and another going to be put on the stocks; there is soap made, and making from a recipe in Nicholson?s Chemistry; there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same book.?

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : probably Don Quixote

The seventeenth-century waterman-poet John Taylor had read More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Montaigne, and Cervantes in translation, but he never mastered a foreign language and he relentlessly satirised latinate prose: I ne'er used Accidence so much as now, Nor all these Latin words here interlaced I do not know if they with sense are placed, I in the book did find them".'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor 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

William Shakespeare :

'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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

[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

Adam Smith :

'[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

Maxmillian de Bethune Sully : Memoirs

?Now I do not know what you imagined in reading Sully?s Memoirs, but I always imagined the Arsenal was one large building, with a fa?ade to it like a very large hotel or a palace, and I fancied it was somewhere in the middle of Paris. On the contrary, it is quite in the suburbs.?

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'Sneyd and Charlotte have begun Sir Charles Grandison: I almost envy them the pleasure of reading Clementina?s story for the first time. It is one of those pleasures which is never repeated in life.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book

Samuel Richardson :

'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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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

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

Thomas Hobbes :

'[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

James Harris : Diaries

"4/2/1845 - I have read two volumes (the last two, I think) of Lord Malmesbury's Diaries, and with intense interest. I knew so many of the men he writes about, and lived on the spot where they acted."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie 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

Mme de Genlis :

?At home, she read with her mother, from Madame de Genlis and from William Hayley.?

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Amelia Opie Print: Book

Adam Smith : Wealth of Nations

'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

Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil

'[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) :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book

William Smith Williams : letter to Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Bronte postscript to letter to William Smith Williams, 12 May 1848: 'I find -- on glancing over yours, that I have forgotten to answer a question you ask respecting my next work ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter

William Smith Williams : letter

Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 22 November 1848: 'I put your most friendly letter [recommending homeopathic treatments] into Emily's hands as soon as I had myself perused it ... after reading your letter she said "Mr Williams' intention was kind and good, but he was under a delusion -- Homeopathy was only another form of Quackery."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter

William Smith Williams : letter

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Bronte Manuscript: Letter

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

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.'"

Unknown

Century: 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.'"

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Croswell

Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's School Days

'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 shakes 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: Book

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

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

'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

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

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".'

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

"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

William Shakespeare : Venus and Adonis

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marie Stopes Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Prelude

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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

" ... 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

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

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

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

William Wordsworth : poems

"One windfall came [to Hannah Mitchell] from a passing walker, who asked if the family liked reading poetry. Although only familiar with verse in the local paper, Mitchell quickly answered in the affirmative ... The walker (whom years later Mitchell recognised as the model Manchester employer Hans Renold) left her his copy of Wordsworth's poems, which Mitchell read and memorized until her mother removed them since they 'wasted' her time."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book

Emanuel Swedenborg :

" ... Barbara Bodichon ... used to remember with delight the books whch James Buchanan, their father's friend and their own teacher, used to read them: 'the Bible, the Arabian Nights and Swedenborg'."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Buchanan Print: Book

William Morris : poetry

"Before she came into contact with Suffragism ... [Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence] felt her political outlook ... had been conditioned by reading Morris, Carpenter, and Whitman's poetry."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Print: Unknown

Samuel Smiles : LIfe and Labour

"In Holloway ... ['General' Drummond] read Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs and Samuel Smiles's Life and Labour."

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: General Drummond Print: Book

William Shakespeare : History plays

"Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence wrote of having read Shakespeare's history plays whilst in prison [as suffragette] ..."

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence Print: Book

Thomas Boston : Human Nature in its Fourfold State

Had no company. Passed the afternoon reading part of Boston's Fourfold State.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Mackie Print: Book

James Boswell : The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel

Books lately read: A Journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Dr Johnson, by James Boswell, Esq. J. Boswell does appear so wonderfully simple, so surprisingly ingenuous, that I cannot but smile as I read his work...

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton 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

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

'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

William Shakespeare :

'"[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

William Hickling Prescott : [Spanish 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

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Paton Print: Book

William Prescott : HIstory of the Conquest of Peru

'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

William Prescott : Conquest of Peru, 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

William Prescott : Conquest of Mexico, The

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

Samuel Johnson : An account of the life of Mr. Richard Savage

I send you by George (who in Fred?s absence on business, is kind enough to be the bearer of this) the volume which contains the Life of Savage. I have turned down the leaf. Now do read it attentively; if you do, I know from your excellent understanding you will be delighted. If you slur it, you will think it dry.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

David Bleich, "Gender Interests in Reading and Language": "I first 'understood' Wordsworth when I heard his poetry read by his descendent, Jonathan Wordsworth, some years ago."

Unknown

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Jonathan Wordsworth

Adam Dickson : An essay on the causes of the present high price of provisions, as connected with the luxury, currency, taxes, and national debt

Marginal comments throughout the text, generally of the format of a key word within the text being indicated with a cross and the marginal comment then arguing a related point - e.g. P.5, in the printed sentence "But whether or not our lands, during the whole of this period, have produced much less than usual, requires very extensive knowledge to determine, more probably, than any private person has any opportunity of acquiring", there is a cross above "private person" and in the RH margin, the marginalia reads "It is not the opinion of a private person. It seems to be the general opinion that there have been seasons of the bad crops for 5 or 6 years." On p.6, in the printed sentence, "Now, when the price of provisions is raised by bad crops, land continues of the same value, and the farmer cannot afford a higher rent," "same" has a cross above it, and the marginalia beside reads "Land can't continue of the same value so long as the crops are bad and the price of provisions is raised thereby and both the value of the land and provisions hightened [sic] still more by the quantity of currency." Further marginalia throughout the text.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

'I have been reading Boswell's Life of Johnson which is very entertaining; I never saw Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides or Western Islands, I suppose it is an amusing Book.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

'Recd a parcel from William last night. I was at the time reading Boswell's Life of Johnson, but it was immediately laid down, for the entertainment I anticipated, from hearing how Cobbett stood...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Sharp Print: Book

Thomas Secker : Lectures on the Catechism of the Church of England

'At church twice today as usual; the Parson at his work amongst the children, armed with a huge octavo which he called Archbishop Secker's Lectures on the Church Catechism which he fired off to the confusion of the understanding of the children... If he be not tired, I know I am with hearing him.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: 'The Parson' Print: Book

Samuel Shuckford : The sacred and profane history of the world

'Read Shuckfords Connections, Galt's Life of West. The former is a work of a man of great learning and little judgement.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Rape of Lucrece

" ... [Sir John] Suckling, coming across what he called 'an imperfect Copy' of [Shakespeare's The Rape of] Lucrece, decided to compose his own 'Supplement.'"

Unknown

Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Suckling

William Wordsworth : poetry

Stephen Gill, "Copyright and the Publishing of Wordsworth, 1850-1900": "Many eminent Victorians -- George Eliot, Mill, Ruskin, and Tennyson ... read Wordsworth in the collections [of his poetry] published in his lifetime ..."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Stuart Mill Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

Stephen Gill, "Copyright and the Publishing of Wordsworth, 1850-1900": "In 1870 Moxon decided to launch a new edition [of Wordsworth's poetry] ... prefaced by an essay from William Michael Rossetti. When the Wordsworths saw it ... they were outraged. Not only had Rossetti made some factual errors, he had presented the poet in an unflattering light ..."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book

William Michael Rossetti : Biographical essay on Wordsworth

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Excursion

Stephen Gill, "Copyright and the Publishing of Wordsworth, 1850-1900": "On a visit to the Quantocks... William Hale White, 'Mark Rutherford,' reread The Excursion, book 1, and commented, 'Much of the religion by which Wordsworth lives is very indefinite. [...]' ... What he quotes in his journal is the conclusion of the Pedlar's 'natural wisdom' in its pre-1845 version."

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Hale White 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 ...'"

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ann Evans

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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Bookbinder Frederick Rogers read Faust "through from beginning to end, not because I was able at sixteen to appreciate Goethe, but because I was interested in the Devil". Moving on to Don Quixote, "I did not realise its greatness till long after; but its stories of adventure and its romance and homour appealed to me strongly enough".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Rogers Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

'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

William Shakespeare :

'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

William Wordsworth :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book

Edmund Spenser :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book

Thomas Chalmers : A series of discourses on the Christian recelation

'Having lately read Chalmers Sermons on Astronomy in which he has expressed the highest admiration and respect for I. Newton's modest and firm faith in christianity.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton

Thomas Gisborne : The Testimony of Natural Theology

'Wrote part of a sermon from Gisborne's Natural Theology'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book

Thomas Gisborne : The Testimony of Natural Theology

'I have also read Gisbourne's natural theology. The design and matter of the work are excellent but it is exceedingly deficient in that plainess and persipicuity in which an argument of so very popular a description should be pressed on the attention of common readers [... ] there is an imitation of Paley's manner of putting an argument but the manner very inferior [to]Paley.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Newton Print: Book

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

John Wilmot Earl of Rochester : poems

"The books in which Pope's annotations, though scanty, are undoubtedly authentic include a copy of the racy poems of the Earl of Rochester in which Pope filled in some of the concealed or deliberately omitted names."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Pope Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

"After waiting a considerable period for the remittance, the box was forced, and found to contain a vast quantity of brickbats and an odd volume of Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets'. The poring over of that volume possibly helped to decide that I should turn versifier."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bedford Leno Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Sonnets

"I stayed for the night in Derby, visiting its various printing offices in search of a job, but without success, and, hugging the shore of the river Derwent, made for Matlock on the following morn. I had read the whole of Wordsworth's Sonnets and, penniless as I was, I enjoyed the journey."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Bedford Leno Print: Book

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne : Letters of Madame de Sevigne

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

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'I have been with a nice little party of college friends, to see King John, and for a week after, I could do nothing but read Shakespear.' [Siddings was performing in Covent Garden between 12.05.1810 and 21.06.1810]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Letters

"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."

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

H. J. Jackson discusses extensive annotations by Hester Lynch Piozzi in 1818 copy of Rasselas in the Houghton Library, Harvard (her marginalia include anecdotes and remembered quotes from Johnson, as well as comments on the text).

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Piozzi Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

Rupert Brooke to Jacques Raverat, April 1909: "'I have done no 'work' for ages: and my tripos is in a few weeks ... Ths holidays I fled from my family for long ... in a hut by a waterfall on Dartmoor, a strange fat Johnian and I 'worked' for three weeks. He read -- oh! Aristotle, I think! And I read the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission; and books on Metre (I'm a poet, you know!); and Shakespere! It was a great time.'"

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rupert Brooke 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

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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'In the year 1816 we were at Brighton for the summer holidays, and he read to us "Sir Charles Grandison". It was always habit in our family to read aloud every evening.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babbington Macaulay Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book

William Wordsworth : annotations on Shakespeare's sonnets in The Works of the British Poets

"[in November 1803, when Coleridge was thirty-one] Wordsworth had been reading Shakespeare's sonnets in Coleridge's copy of a set of the Works of the British Poets, in which both he and Coleridge's brother-in-law Robert Southey had made manuscript notes. Taking up the Shakespeare volume and coming upon a pencilled note of Wordsworth's critical of the sonnets, Coleridge answered with a long note of his own, in ink [disagreeing with Wordsworth's judgements]."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: annotations in printed text

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population

"In January 1804 Coleridge annotated, heavily, in pencil, the first dozen or so pages of a copy of Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population by way of assistance to Southey, who had to review it."

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

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

H. J. Jackson discusses Leigh Hunt's responsive annotations, including personal reminiscences and observations, as well as critical remarks, to his copy of James Boswell's Life of Johnson.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Leigh Hunt Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

"Fulke Greville's copy of Boswell [Life of Johnson] stands out among individual copies annotated by readers who had known Boswell or Johnson or other members of their circle ... offering facts or interpretations of events that may be at odds with the text and that supplement it in useful ways."

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fulke Greville Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

H. J. Jackson discusses annotations of unidentified male reader in 1793 copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson; this reader, referred to in annotations as "Mr L", known to be from Lichfield, twenty years Johnson's junior, and also a pupil at Lichfield Grammar School and student at Pembroke College, Oxford; annotations date from 1793 to 1800.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr L. Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

H. J. Jackson notes John Gibson Lockhart's annotations, including personal reminiscences in response to sections of text, in his copy of James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Gibson Lockhart Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

"An unknown reader inclined to be sarcastic at Boswell's expense in a British Library copy of the 1829 edition [of the Life of Johnson] ... goes to some pains to record a moment of agreement with Johnson's protest ' [...] What is climate to happiness? Place me in the heart of Asia, should I not be exiled?' This the reader confirms by his own example: '15th Novr on the Nile -- how often have I found this realised' (p.198)."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

H. J. Jackson notes unknown reader's marginal contradiction of assertion of Samuel Johnson that a dog will be as likely to take a small piece of meat as a large one, when presented wth both, recorded in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

H. J. Jackson on readers' responses in annotations to Samuel Johnson's comment that the letter H seldom begins any but the first syllable of a word, recorded by James Boswell in the Life of Samuel Johnson: "A Cambridge University Library copy of the first edition annotated in at least four hands has in the margin at that point a list of words that would appear to refute Johnson's statement: 'Shepherd / Cowherd / Abhor / Behave / Uphold / Exhaust' (1: 166)."

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: anon 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

Edmund Gosse : Life of Philip Henry Gosse F.R.S.

H. J. Jackson notes "extra illustration" by Philip Gosse of his grandfather, Edmund Gosse's Life of Philip Henry Gosse F.R.S. (1890) with letters, drawings, photographs etc.

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Gosse

William Wordsworth : [unknown]

'I am reading Wordsworth with one of the younger classes but it is difficult to explain to people of purely Indian associations Wordsworth's love for nature.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : Pleasures of Memory

'I have read a good many things, a life of Scott, the "Pleasures of Memory" by S. Rogers, Roman History and other things.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Walter Raleigh Print: Book

William Wollaston : The Religion of Nature Delineated

[Transcript in Journal of Chapter One, in shorthand]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Byrom Print: Book

William Shakespereare : [various]

'I read a good deal of Shakespeares works. Item Ben Johnsons, & Return'd them to the library'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Henry Ott Print: Book

Thomas a Kempis : The Imitation of Christ

'Gifford had read only some ballads, the black-letter romance Parismus and Parismenus, some odd loose magazines of his mother's, the Bible (which he studied with his grandmother) and "The Imitation of Christ" (read to his mother on her deathbed). He then learned algebra by surreptitiously reading Fenning's textbook: his master's son owned the book and had deliberately hidden it from him'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book

Adam Smith : [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

William Morris : [unknown]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Toole Print: Book

Samuel Estwick : Considerations on the Negroe Cause, Commonly So Called

H. J. Jackson discusses Granville Sharp's "tenacious, rigorous, and expansive" argumentative annotations in anonymous 1772 pro-slavery pamphlet (by "a West Indian plantation owner named Estwick").

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Granville Sharp

Samuel Johnson : Diary of a Journey into North Wales

H. J. Jackson notes exception to William Beckford's usual practice of "only occasionally" adding comments to his books: "His copy of an 1816 edition of Samuel Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales follows the general pattern, but by the time he was through with it, Beckford was sufficiently annoyed to include a long summary note, signed with his initials."

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Beckford 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 Sedgwick : Hints to the Public and Legislature, on the Nature and Effect of Evangelical Preaching

H. J. Jackson notes that Coleridge wrote "an extraordinary set of notes ... designed to help [Robert] Southey with a review" into a copy of James Sedgwick, Hints to the Public and Legislature, on the Nature and Effect of Evangelical Preaching (1810).

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

William Shakespeare : [works]

'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

William Wordsworth : [unknown]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [works]

'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 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book

William Morris : The Earthly Paradise

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Edgar Coppard Print: Book

Samuel Saunders : A Short and Easy Introduction to Scientific and Philosophic Botany

H. J. Jackson notes annotations (adding"information and explanations") made to copy of Samuel Saunders, Short and Easy Introduction to Scientific and Physical Botany (1792) by contemporary, possibly female reader.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

William Oldys : annotations in 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: George Steevens

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

H. J. Jackson discusses copious annotations made in 2-volume first-edition (1791) copy of James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, which signed "Scriblerus" (who Jackson identifies as Fulke Greville), commenting: "[Scriblerus] evidently read the Life, or at least dipped into it, more than once: a summary note from the end of his first reading is dated November 1791, but other notes include dates in 1792 and 1797."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fulke Greville Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fulke Greville Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Fulke Greville Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'Catharine MacAulay's daughter shared her mother's republican views, and read Shakespeare for her own purposes, confessing that far from being delighted by King John, she "never read the Kings".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book, Unknown

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Mr Rishton read "The Faerie Queene" to Frances Burney and her sisters, "in which he is extremely delicate, omitting whatever, to the poet's great disgrace, has crept in that is improper for a woman's ear".'

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

Thomas Malthus : Essay on Population

[Sedgwick read the 'Essay' twice in 1811]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Sedgwick 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

Samuel Johnson : Life of Waller

'Burney haunted the Thrales' library at Streatham, hiding her book when a man appeared: "she instantly put away [her] book", in this instance a translation of Cicero, when Mr Seward entered the library, or hid under her gloves his "Life of Waller" when Johnson approached.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Unknown

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'[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

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

William Shakespeare :

'she read much Shakespeare.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book

William Mason : Caractacus

'[opinion of William Mason's play, "Caractacus", entered in diary]: 'My soul melted into every pleasing sensation, the language charming! divine harmony, beams in every line such a love of virtue! such examples of piety, resignation and fortitude! raise the soul to an ecstatic height. Sweet Evelinda how my heart throbbed for her!'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book

Matthew G. Lewis : The Monk

'The evening until one was [frittered?] away in reading the 'Monk' for the fourth time at least.... In the second volume are some beautiful lines that often delights one ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott 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

William Morris :

'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

James Thomson : Edward and Elinora

[opinion of Thomson's Edward and Elinora, entered in diary]: 'A most affecting tale, pleasingly tender - fraught with virtuous sentiments.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent

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

James Mackintosh : Vindiciae Galliciae

[note in diary upon finishing Mackintosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae"]: 'As far as I am a Judge I think this work very well understood. The author is master on his subject & has the art of rendering others. HE is not scurrilous. He argues well, he seldom begs the question. He narrates what has passed in France, traces causes with precision - perhaps he speaks too strongly in the latter part. I gained much information from his work.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent 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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'In the month of April 1792... Anna read Richardson's "Clarissa" for the second time - "the style is prolix, the manners obsolete, & I felt fidgeted at the repetitions not being 15, yet surely it is wonderfully wrought."'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Prelude, The

'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

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'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 Foresaken 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

Emily Dickinson : [unknown]

'After Stalingrad, [Bernard Kops] immersed himself in Russian literature. A GI dating his sister introduced him to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bernard Kops Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

"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: Moll Neville Print: Book

Thomas Sorocold : Supplications of Saints; A booke of prayers: ... Wherein are three most excellent prayers made by Queene Elizabeth

" ... 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

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'There were some problems which I never solved in all my youth. For instance, there was Gloucester's Natural Son in King Lear. For if bad Edmund was a Natural Son, presumably Good Edgar must have been an Un-natural son; and what on earth could that be?'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book

William Morris :

'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

William Wordsworth :

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Litchfield Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'One would be called upon to read aloud, say, Wordsworth's "Excursion" with her - Wordsworth was her religion - but one was never able to read more than two or three consecutive lines without stopping to discuss exactly what the words meant; or, alternatively, for her to give messages to Janet.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gwen Raverat Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'After supper read the "Tragedy of Macbeth", which I like very well.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Rothenstein : Men and Memories

'He even found time to be as courteous and helpful as ever to old friends, reading through, for instance, William Rothenstein's 'Men and Memories in typescript, with many encouraging and critical comments'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: typescript

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo Di Medici, 2 vols

'You will readily believe that I have not read much since I wrote to you. Roscoe's life of Lorenzo di'Medici - a work concerning which I shall only observe, in the words of the Auctioneer that it is "well worth any gentleman's perusal" - is the only thing almost that I recollect aught abo[ut.]'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book

William Smellie : Philosophy of Natural History

[in April 1792 Larpent read] 'Smellie's "Philosophy of Nature" [sic] which she considered poorly organized but of sufficient value to transcribe extracts for her children.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book

Thomas Gisborne : [conduct books]

[Anna Seward on Thomas Gisborne's conduct books]: 'too strict'; they 'might have been more generally useful upon a less rigid plan of admonition, especially the volume dedicated to females.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'in the even I wrote my London letters... also read the News paper... as I was a writing all the even my wife read "Clarissa Harlowe" to me.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Peggy Turner Print: Unknown

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'My wife read part of "Clarissa Harlowe" to me in the even as I sat a-posting my book.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Peggy 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

James Thomson : Seasons, The

[Marginalia]: a few pencil marginal marks (in form of bracketed lines of text eg p 79 has lines 203-7 bracketed), plus some ms notes in ink on binding page. The ink notes read 'Envy-Love 78'; 'Hope - Grief 78'; 'The Deluge 79'; 'Effects of changing weather 80'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

[while he was doing his accounts Turner's wife read aloud to him] 'the moving Scene of the Funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlowe' - "Oh: may the Supreme Being give me Grace to lead my life in such a manner as my Exit may in some respect be like that Divine Creature."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Peggy Turner Print: Book

Edmund Spenser :

" ... Abraham Cowley ... found that reading Spenser in his mother's parlor 'made [him] a Poet as immediately as a Child is made an Eunuch.'"

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Abraham Cowley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merry Wives of Windsor

'Read "The Merry Wives of Windsor" wherein I think the genius of the author shows itself in a very conspicuous manner as to humour. But I cannot find in my heart to say I think there is one good moral character.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'In the even my wife finished reading of "Clarissa Harlowe", which I look upon as a very well-wrote thing though it must be allowed it is too prolix. I think the author keeps up the character of every person in all places; and as to the manner of its ending, I like it better than if it had terminated in more happy circumstances.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Peggy Turner 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

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

James Thomson : Seasons, The

[Maud Montgomery] 'wrote her first poem after reading "Seasons", a book of poems by James Thomson, written in blank verse. Maud was so enraptured by them that she had to sit down at once to write one of her own.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Maud Montgomery Print: Book

William Sherlock : A practical discourse concerning death

'In the even and the day read 2 of Tillotson's sermons and part of Sherlock upon death. I this day completed reading of Tillotson's sermons over the second time, and so far as I am a judge I think them to be a complete body of divinity, they being wrote in a plain familiar style, but far from what may be deemed low.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Sherlock : A practical discourse concerning death

'...in the even read part of Sherlock upon death.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner 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

William Sherlock : A practical discourse concerning death

'This day completed the reading of Sherlock on death and which I esteem a very plain, good book, proper for every Christain to read; that is, rich and poor, men and women, young and old.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Sherlock : A practical discourse concerning death

'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

William Shakespeare : [Histories]

'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

William Sherlock : A practical discourse concerning death

'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

Thomas Salmon : A critical essay concerning marriage

'Read part of Salmon "On Marriage".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Thomas Salmon : A critical essay concerning marriage

'In the even finished reading Salmon "On Marriage", which I think to be a very indifferent thing, for the author appears to me to be a very bad logician.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : biographies

Leon Edel, introducing vol 1 of Henry James's Letters: "[Edmund Gosse] had written biographies which James had criticized but read with lively interest."

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book

William James : Review of Herman Grimm, Unuberwundliche Machte

Henry James to William James, 22 November 1867: "I recd. about a fortnight ago -- your letter with the review of Grimm's novel ... I liked your article very much ... It struck me as ... very readable. I copied it forthwith and sent it to the Nation."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter

William Morris : The Earthly Paradise

Henry James to Alice James, in letter begun 10 March 1869 (continued on 12 March), on evening spent at home of William Morris: "After dinner (we stayed to dinner, Miss Grace, Miss S. S. and I,) Morris read us one of his unpublished poems, from the second series of his 'un-Earthly Paradise,' and his wife having a bad toothache, lay on the sofa, with her handkerchief to her face."

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: William Morris

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

'While I was writing the two volumes [of Pamela], my worthy-hearted wife, and the young lady who is with us, when I had read them some part of the story, which I had begun without their knowing it, used to come in to my little closet every night with - "Have you any more of Pamela, Mr R...?"'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Unknown, manuscript of his novel

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'The Persons who have seen [the manuscript of "Clarissa"], and whom I could not deny, are Dr Heylin, and his Lady, both excellent Judges and fond of Writings of Amusement: Miss Cheyne, Daughter of my late dear Friend the Doctor; a young Lady of Taste and Reading. Mr Freke, the Surgeon, whom once I mentioned to you, and who read it with a Friend of his. Dr Young has seen a great Part of it; and Mr Cibber Senior, having heard of it, and liking "Pamela", was very desirous to see it; and I being put in hope, that he would not spare it, was desirous he should'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Heylin Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Heylin Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Cheyne Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Freke Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Young Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Colley Cibber Manuscript: Unknown, early MS version

Edmund Spenser :

'I don't wonder that you are in such raptures with Spenser! What an imagination! What an invention! What painting! What colouring displayed throughout the works of that admirable author! and yet, for want of time, or opportunity, I have not read his "Fairy Queen" through in series, or at a heat, as I may call it'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Highmore Print: Book

Edmund Spenser :

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book

James Steuart : An inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy

[Marginalia]: some marginal and text pencil annotations to pp 408-438 only, e.g: p. 408 'Prop.1 Prices are in proportion to the plenty of money ...' has a vertical marginal line; p.416 text line 'This reasoning is consistent with the principles we have examined, and humbly rejected in the preceding chapter ...' has the ms note 'Mr Hume's reasoning is correct'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book

Thomas Sherlock : Sermons on various subjects, moral and theological, now first published

'In the even and the day read 6 of Bishop Sherlock's sermons, which I think extremely good, there being sound reasoning in them and seem wrote with an ardent spirit of piety, being mostly levelled against the deists.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Edmund Gibson : The evil and danger of lukewarmness in religion

'In the even read Gibson on lukewarmness in religion, and a sermon of his entitled "Trust in God, the best remedy against fears of all kinds", both of which I look upon as extreme good things.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Edmund Gibson : Trust in God the best remedy against fears of all kinds

'In the even read Gibson on lukewarmness in religion, and a sermon of his entitled "Trust in God, the best remedy against fears of all kinds", both of which I look upon as extreme good things.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'Though I have constantly been a purchaser of the Ramblers from the first five that you were so kind as to present me with, yet I have not had time to read any farther than those first five, till within these two or three days past. But I can go no further than the thirteenth, now before me, till I have acquainted you, that I am inexpressibly pleased with them. I remember not a thing in the Spectators, in those Spectators that I read, for I never found time... to read them all, that half so much struck me; and yet I think of them highly.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Serial / periodical

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 James : Review of Hippolyte Taine, "On Intelligence"

Henry James to William James, 28 September 1872 (letter begun 22 September): "I read your Taine and admired, though but imperfectly understood it."

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

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream

Henry James to William James, 8 January 1873, on meeting with Mrs Kemble on previous evening: "She is very magnificent, and was very gracious, and being draped (for an evening call) in lavender satin lavishly decollete, reminded me strangely, in her talk and manner, of the time when as infants, in St. John's Wood, we heard her read the Midsummer Night's Dream."

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Anne Kemble

William James : "criticism of Middlemarch"

Henry James to William James, 9 April 1873: "Your letter was full of points of great interest. Your criticism on Middlemarch was excellent and I have duly transcribed it into that note-book which it will be a relief to your mind to know I have at last set up."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter

William Shakespeare : As you like it

'In the evening wrote my London letters and read Shakespeare's "As you Like It" and "Taming a Shrew", both of which I think good comedies.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The taming of the shrew

'In the evening wrote my London letters and read Shakespeare's "As you Like It" and "Taming a Shrew", both of which I think good comedies.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Works

'After the fatigue of the day was over, I read part of Shakespeare's "Works".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Works

'In the even read part of Shakespeare's "Works", which I think extreme good in their kind.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Turner Print: Book

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 Shakespeare : [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

Hammond Innes : Attack Alarm

[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

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

Thomas Edwards : [letter relating story of a real life 'Pamela']

'I am very charmed, my dear Mr Edwards, with your sweet Story of a Second Pamela. Had I drawn mine from the very Life, I should have made a much more perfect Piece of my first Favourite.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Manuscript: Letter

William Shakespeare : [illustrated, edited version]

'I have nothing to say in favour or disfavour of the Shakespeare illustrated. Some pieces are not calculated for more than the present Age, or Time, I should rather say. But this, endeavouring to rob Shakespeare of his Invention, proposes possibly a more durable Existence. Yet, I would not wish to be the Author of so invidious a Piece.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book

William Mason : Elfrida

'You did not tell me before, that you had read the Hermit and Alfrida. There are charming Things in both. I read them when they first came out, having a great opinion of the poetical capacity of both gentlemen. I was not disappointed. I forget the story of the Hermit, and its management: But in general I was pleased with it. Mr Mason has a fine genius... But I thought his piece was rather too poetical. - A strange censure of a fine piece of poetry. In other words, that he was too lavish, in other words. of his poetical talents...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book

William Mason : Elfrida

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Bradshaigh 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

William Shakespeare : Henry the Fifth

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's Schooldays

'I am reading "Tom's Brown's Schooldays", which is awfully nice.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

[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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Norman Collins : Anna

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Pericles

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King John

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [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

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

?I now read for the first time "The Tempest", "Measure for Measure", "Love?s Labour?s Lost", and many other of Shakespeare?s comedies, besides the supreme tragedies, among [them] the greatest creations of the human intellect ? "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Othello" and "Lear". From no "edition de luxe" did I read. The plays were published by Dick, cost me one penny each, a sum well suited to my means. No matter that the price was small and the paper poor; no matter that there were neither theatre nor stage, neither actors or orchestra. All the more scope was given to fancy and imagination.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Measure for measure

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Love's Labour's Lost

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

?I now read for the first time "The Tempest", "Measure for Measure", "Love?s Labour?s Lost", and many other of Shakespeare?s comedies, besides the supreme tragedies, among [them] the greatest creations of the human intellect ? "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Othello" and "Lear". From no "edition de luxe" did I read. The plays were published by Dick, cost me one penny each, a sum well suited to my means. No matter that the price was small and the paper poor; no matter that there were neither the theatre nor stage, neither actors or orchestra. All the more scope was given to fancy and imagination.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Lucy Gray

?In one of my early schoolbooks, indeed, I had read "Lucy Gray" and "We are seven". The music of these simple lays had charmed my boyish fancy and lingered in my memory.?

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Wordsworth : We are seven

?In one of my early schoolbooks, indeed, I had read "Lucy Gray" and "We are seven". The music of these simple lays had charmed my boyish fancy and lingered in my memory.?

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Daffodils

?Joe was never tired of expatiating on the beauties and grandeur of Wordsworth, and my lack of responsiveness must have occasionally surprised him. When he selected some of the shorter poems ? "The Daffodils", "The Highland Girl", "The Solitary Reaper" and other gems ? and invited me to read them aloud, Joe?s quick ear soon detected that I read with the spirit as well as with the understanding, and, thus tutored, I quickly became a devoted Wordsworthian.?

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

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

Edmund Gosse : Life of Congreve

Henry James to Robert Louis Stevenson, 31 July 1888: "Edmund Gosse has sent me his clever little life of Congreve, just out, and I have read it ..."

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

William Mason : [items in Dodsley's Miscellanies]

'In Dodsley's "Miscellanies" there are two or three pretty pieces of Mr Mason. Bacon's "Life by Mr Mallet" perhaps you have seen. He is not near so good a Man, I fear, as Mr Mason'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: Book

May Sinclair : Life and Death of Harriet Frean

[Lehmann's novel "Dusty Answer" has a structure] 'possibly derived from May Sinclair's bleak and brilliant portrait of misguided self sacrifice, "Life and Death of Harriet Frean", which Rosamond read on its publication in 1922 and much admired'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book

William Jones : Grammar of the Persian Language, A

[Marginalia]: some pencil marks and marginal ms notes throughout the text. Generally they highlight points of grammar or translation, mostly in English but at least one is in Persian (p. 132). Examples: title page "x While the nightingale, oh Hafiz, makes a boast [?] of his eloquence, do thou lessen [?] the value of his life, by singing thy Persian strains" [translation of Persian quote on title page, similarly marked ie 'x'?]; p.100/101 is bookmarked with a scrap of contemporary newspaper and the text line 'By the approach of Spring, and the return of December, the leaves of our life are continually folded' is annotated with underlines and alternative translations above words.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book

Adam Smith : Wealth of Nations

?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

James Douglas :

'If Machen?s onslaught is worse than Jimmy Douglas?s in the ?Star?, it will be a treat.'

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

Madame de Genlis : Letters on Education

'While at Mitchelstown she brushed up on her French by reading Madame de Genlis's Letters on Education, Louis Sebastien Mercier's comedy "Mon Bonnet de Nuit", and the Baroness de Montoliere's novel "Caroline de Litchfield". The first she pronounced "wonderfully clever", and it may well have proved helpful to her as a teacher; the last she described as "One of the prettiest things I have ever read", and it perhaps suggested that her own life could serve as the basis of a sentimental novel'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book

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

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

William James : Principles of Psychology

Henry James to William James, 6 February 1891: " ... I blush to say I haven't had freedom of mind or cerebral freshness ... to tackle -- more than dipping in here and there -- your mighty and magnificent book ..."

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

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

Edmund Gosse : Preface to Vol 1 of Ibsen, Works

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

Thomas Armstrong : Crowthers of Bankdam

[In bed recovering from gastro-enteritis] 'I read "Crowthers" all day, and loved it.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

[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

William Shakespeare : Pericles

'I revised "Pericles" [for Elocution exam] and wrote notes on it. It's a horrid play, completely unlikely but quite fast moving.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Naomi Michison : Conquered, The

'I finished "The Conquered", and wrote to Uncle John, who sent me a really wizard book - 10/ - called "People and Places"'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

'I read Wilhelm Meister aloud, and then G. read part of the Merchant of Venice'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes 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

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

'Ill all day and unable to go out. G. finished Romeo and Juliet'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes 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

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'G. read Julius Caesar aloud, as far as Caesar's appearance in the senate house. Very much struck with the masculine style of this play and its vigorous moderation compared with Romeo and Juliet'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

''Finished Minna von Barnhelm... G. began Antony and Cleopatra'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

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

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

'Spent afternoon reading "Twelfth Night"... read more of "England their England" which is a scream.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'Read Italianische Reise - Residence in Naples. Pretty passage about a star seen through a chink in the ceiling as he lay in bed. G. read Henry IV'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : unknown

'Had a really wizard lecture from [Prof.] Renwick on Milton, in which he read a good lot of Milton and Shakespeare to us, and he certainly can read.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : "paper on Pater"

Henry James, in letter of 13 December 1894 to Edmund Gosse, returns, and discusses reading (with enthusiasm) Gosse's article on Pater.

Unknown

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

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'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: Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Henry IV, Part II

'Read Hermann and Dorothea - 4 first books. G read 2nd Part of Henry IV'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

'Began Tasso aloud. G. read two acts of As You Like It'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'Read aloud Heine's "Gotter im Exil" and some of his poems. G. read aloud Lear'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : The Taming of the Shrew

'Christmas day. Miserably wet... Taming of the Shrew'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

'Began Stahr's "Torso"... G read "Coriolanus". I read some of "Stahr" to him, but we found it too long wided a style for reading aloud'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

'G. read some of "Twelfth Night", but his head got bad and he was obliged to leave off'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'Read Goethe's "Maxims in the Wanderjahre". Then we compared several scenes of "Hamlet" in Schlegel's translation with the original. It is generally very close and often admirably done but Shakespeare's strong concrete language is almost always weakened'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Hamlet, translated into German by Schlegel

'Read Goethe's Maxims in the Wanderjahre. Then we compared several scenes of Hamlet in Schlegel's translation with the original. It is generally very close and often admirably done but Shakespear's strong concrete language is almost always weakened'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

'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] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Measure for Measure

'Read Hamburgische Briefe at dinner about Voltaire's Merope. Read G's MS. Measure for Measure'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream

'Not well. G began Midsummer Night's Dream. I went to bed early.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : A Winter's Tale

'Read the wondrously beautiful "Romische Elegien" again and some of the Venetian epigrams. G. began Winter's Tale'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : unknown

'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'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot and G.H. Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'G. read Richard III'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'In the evening Dessoir came and read Hamlet'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: [M.] Dessoir Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Venus and Adonis

'read... Shakspeare's (sic) Venus and Adonis'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare (and others) : The Passionate Pilgrim

'I read Shakspeare's (sic) "Passionate Pilgrim" at breakfast and found a sonnet in which he expresses admiration of Spenser (Sonnet VIII)... I must send word of this to G. who has written in his Goethe that Shakspeare has left no line in praise of a contemporary. [inserted later: (G. writes that this sonnet is Barnwell's)]'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Two Gentlemen of Verona

'After dinner read "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and some of the "Sonnets". That play disgusted me more than ever in the final scene where Valentine on Proteus' mere begging pardon where he has no longer any hope of gaining his ends, says: "All that was mine in Silvia I give the"! - Silvia standing by'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'Read Shakspeare's (sic) Sonnets and part of "Tempest"'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'Read "Macbeth".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

'Read "Romeo and Juliet"'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Jones : Poeseos Asiaticae commentariorum libri sex, cum appendice; subjicitur Limon seu miscellaneorum liber: auctore Gulielmo Jones

[Marginalia]: substantially annotated throughout usually in the form of marks (| or *) in the text, to highlight points or sections of interest - usually points of translation - with ms notes, usually in English but some in Persian (ex. p. 436/7) in the margins: eg. p. 301 text = 'Alii in collibus congregati sunt, alii in vallibus', has ms note = 'incorrect in the original as well as in the translation'; p. 381 a line of Persian is marked and in the margin is the translation 'In battle he is a lion-fighting dragon'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Drummond Erskine Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

'Read Henry V and Henry VIII'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Henry VIII

'Read Henry V and Henry VIII'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Henry VI, parts 1, 2 and 3

'Still feverish and unable to fix my mind steadily on reading or writing. Read the 1st, 2nd and 3rd parts of Henry VI, and began Richard II'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Richard II

'Still feverish and unable to fix my mind steadily on reading or writing. Read the 1st, 2nd and 3rd parts of Henry VI, and began Richard II'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

James Boswell : probably Life of Johnson

'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

William James : article on "Brute and Human Intellect"

Henry James to Mrs Henry James Sr., 18 January 1879: "I have just been reading ... [William James's] two articles -- the Brute and Human Intellect and the one in Mind ... I perused them with great interest, sufficient comprehension, and extreme profit."

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

William James : article

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

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 James : letter to Henry James Sr

Henry James to William James, 1 January 1883, on having received William's farewell letter to their father too late for Henry James Sr to see it before he died: "I went out yesterday (Sunday) morning, to the Cambridge cemetary ... and stood beside his grave a long time and read him your letter of farewell -- which I am sure he heard somewhere out of the depths of the still, bright winter air."

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Manuscript: Letter

William Shakespeare : [works]

?Whilst in Mr W?s employ, I combined my poetic readings at all leisure moments. I procured and read speedily a complete "Iliad" in English. Some of Shakespeare?s works having fallen in my way, I read them with avidity, as I did almost every other book, and though deeply interested by his historical characters and passages, I never either then or since relished his blank verse, or that of any other poet.?

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

William Robertson : History of Scotland

?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 on 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

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the poets

'... I also enlarged my acquaintance with English literature, read Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", and, as a consequence, many of their productions also. Macpherson's "Ossain", whilst it gave me a glimpse of our most ancient love, interested my feelings and absorbed my attention. I also bent my thoughts on more practical studies, and at one time had nearly the whole of Lindsey Murray's Grammar stored in my memory, although I never so far benefited by it as to become ready at pausing.'

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

James Macpherson : Ossian

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

Mostyn John Armstrong : Scotch Atlas; or description of the kingdom of Scotland: divided into counties, with the subdivisions of sherifdoms; shewing their respective boundaries and extent, soil, produce, ... also their cities, chief towns, seaports, mountains, ...

[Marginalia]: Three entries (Perth, Haddington and Fife & Kinross) have been annotated with some extra information ex. from the Perth entry 'At a small village calld [sic] Pitcaithly within a mile of Dumbarny, 25 miles from Perth, is a well whose water is remarkable for curing sore eyes. Near Loch Dochart in Breadalbane, is Ben More, among the highest hills in Scotland.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Wemyss Print: Book

G.W.M. Reynolds : Reynolds's Miscellany

?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

William Shakespeare : [plays]

?Great was our delight, too, when chance opportunities came in the way of such of us as could read. An opportunity of this kind arrived when a firm of printers in London brought out a penny Shakespeare ? a play of Shakespeare?s for a penny! Well do I remember this cheap treasure. It was my first introduction to the great bard. Gracious! How I devoured play after play as they came out. I was a poor errand boy at the time. When on my errands I used to steal odd moments to read my penny Shakespeare.?

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Edwin Adams Print: Book

James Thomson : The Seasons

'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

James Thomson : Seasons, The

'I pursued each of them with much interest, but especially the "Seasons". I found this to be just the book I had wanted. It commended itself to my warmest approbation, immediately on my perceiving its character and design...'[continues to describe impact of the book at length]

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

Emanuel Swedenborg : unknown

'Began the Antigone, read Von Bohlen on Genesis, and Swedenborg'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book

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

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

'In the course of my very desultory readings, I perused "Boswell's Life of Dr Johnson"; which I still consider to be a very amusing and very instructive piece of biography.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book

William Wordsworth :

'I have begun the Eumenides, having finished the Choephorae. We are reading Wordsworth in the evenings - at least G. is reading him to me'.

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

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'G. has finished "the Excursion", which repaid us for going to the end by an occasional fine passage even to the last.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Henry Lewes 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

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

William Shakespeare : [extracts in school textbook]

'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 passages 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

William Shakespeare : [works not reproduced in schoolbooks]

'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

William Wordsworth :

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

Matilda Serao : [unidentified novel]

Henry James writes (in French) in letter of 26 September 1898 to Paul Bourget of having read and admired a novel by Matilda Serao, in a copy apparently sent to him by Bourget's wife.

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's School Days

'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

Thomas a Kempis : Imitation of Christ, The (?)

'I am reading Thomas a Kempis.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) Print: Book

William James : [Unidentified recently published writings]

Henry James to William James, 23 November 1905: 'I can read [italics]you[end italics] with rapture -- having three weeks ago spent three or four days with Manton Marble at Brighton and found in his hands ever so many of your recent papers and discourses, which having margins of mornings in my room, through both breakfasting and lunching there [...] I found time to read several of'.

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

William James : Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

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

William James : journal articles on psychology

Henry James to William James, 17 October 1907: 'Why the devil I didn't write to you after reading your "Pragmatism" [...] I can't now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself (of interest and enthralment) that the book cast upon me [...] I have been absorbing a number more of your followings-up of the matter in the American (Journal of Psychology[?]) which your devouring devotee Manton Marble of Brighton [...] plied'.

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

Edmund Gosse : life of Swinburne

Henry James to Edmund Gosse, whilst suffering from illness, 10 October 1912: 'I receive with pleasure the small Swinburne [biographical essay by Gosse, originally intended for the DNB] [...] the perusal of which lubricated yesterday two or three rough hours.'

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

Edmund Gosse : Portraits and Sketches

Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 9 November 1912: 'I received longer ago than I quite lke to give chapter and verse for your so-vividly interesting volume of literary "Portraits" [...] I read your book, with lively "reactions," within the first week of its arrival [goes on to praise it in detail]'.

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

James Thomson : Liberty, a Poem

'It was about this time that I first read that very beautiful poem, "The Pleasures of Hope". I also repersued a large portion of Cowper's Poems; and, in spite of the unfavourable accounts of it given by critics, resolved upon reading Thomson's "Liberty". This resolution I carried into effect, to my very considerable amusement, if not instruction. As to its poetical merits, I did not venture to sit in judgement upon them.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book

William Giles : Guide to Domestic Happiness, The

'I read a volume which was called "The Guide to Domestic Happiness", but found that it had no direct bearing upon the case of a working man - all its reasonings, counsels, and encouragements being based on upon the supposition of the reader's being a person of substance and education. the only publication I met with which at all came up to my wishes was one called "Letters on the Marriage State"; but even this bore only in a distant way upon the case in question.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : Human Life, a Poem

'When [winter] was over, I began to steal a few moments occasionally for the purpose of looking upon the fair and sweet face of nature. It was at this time, I think, that I read Mr. Rogers's very beautiful poem called "Human Life" and also a history of the recent wars.'

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

J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi : Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe

'By favour of my friendly draper I also had the satisfaction of looking over the elegantly written and very entertaining "Letters" of Mr. Gray together with M. Sismondi's "History of the Literature of the South of Europe".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book

James Arminius : [works on theology and account of his life]

?As to reading, I had neither time not strength for more than a very little, yet I did something; as I looked through a translation of the works of that eminent divine, James Arminius, with which I was well satisfied, but especially so with the prefixed memoir of his life. I had also, for a few days, the loan of Mr. Montgomery?s ?Lectures on poetry?, a book which I should have been glad to read thoroughly.?

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [plays]

?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

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

Molly V Hughes : London Child of the Seventies, A

'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.'

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

Samuel Pepys : Journal

[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

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

William Blackstone : Commentaries on the laws of England

?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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

?On our coming home & Candles being brought in he took up a volume of "Clarissa Harlowe" (w?ch we happen?d then all to be reading) but having sat about 10 minutes without turning over a leaf, suddenly clos?d the book & went off to bed.?

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Highland Girl

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Solitary Reaper

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book

James Ferguson : His Astronomy explained on Sir Isaac Newton's Principles

'Having been lately interested in astronomical studies & been reading Ferguson and Bonnycastle on that science; I on Monday the 15th began making a planetorium upon a stand which I completed in the following week.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Contarini Fleming (one of multiple volumes)

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

Benjamin Disraeli : Contarini Fleming (second volume)

Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'After breakfast [on board steamboat] returned to my crib. As I was removing "Contarini Fleming" [a novel by Disraeli],in order to lie down, a lady said to me, "Let me look at one of those books," and without further word of question or acknowledgement, took it from my hand, and began reading [...] Arrived at the Delaware, we took boat again; and, as I was sitting very quietly reading "Contarini Fleming", with the second volume lying on the stool by my feet, the same unceremonious lady who had [italics]borrowed[end italics] it before, snatched it up without addressing a single syllable to me, read as long as she pleased, and threw it down again in the same style before she went to dinner.'

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

Benjamin Disraeli : Contarini Fleming (one of multiple volumes)

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Contarini Fleming

Fanny Kemble, 3 December 1832: 'Arrived at the Mansion House [in Philadelphia], which I was quite glad to gain [after coach and steamboat journey]. Installed myself in a room, and while they brought in the packages, finished "Contarini Fleming". It reminded me of Combe's [George Combe, Scottish phrenologist] book'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Fanny Kemble Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

Fanny Kemble, 10 July 1833: 'Mr. [Edward Trelawny, writer and friend of Byron and Shelley] read Don Quixote to us [on board boat travelling up 'valley of the Mohawk']: he reads very peculiarly; slowly, and with very marked emphasis.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Trelawny Print: Book

William Jackson : Thirty letters on various subjects

'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: Elizabeth Marsh Print: Book

Matthew Lewis : The Monk

'On Monday the 30th we went in the coach with... Mr Norman, with whom we dined at the Bolt & Tun, where John & I spent the evening & slept, in the course of which evening I began reading the popular novel of the "Monk".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh 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

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

[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

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Merchant of Venice

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Margery Sharp : Cluny Brown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Margery Sharp : Four Gardens

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book

Thomas Skinner : Splendid misery

'On presenting ourselves at a little shop in the Market Place, a popular circulating library, the old spectacle-nosed keeper told us, that his invariable rule was, before boys [underlined] were entrusted with his books, to have some one as surety for the payment - he accepted my father as such, and registered my name. The old man now asked what book I would like, but being unacquainted with works of fiction, I could not tell him; he handed to us a catalogue which only made the choice more bewildering. I at length selected one, which from its title I thought would be very mysterious - it was "Splendid Misery". This I took home; it was on a Saturday evening. With the first broad light of morning, I arose and greedily devoured several chapters of the first volume.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Christopher Thomson Print: Book

Matthew Lewis : The Monk

'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 stole 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

William Shakespeare : [various titles]

'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

[Samuel?] Johnson : [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

Samuel Smiles : [biographies of men]

'As an apprentice I was a subscriber to the Mechanic's Library, from which I borrowed a great supply of books - my tastes lying largely in the direction of biography ... series of books of Mr Smiles, is still worth the attention of young men in search of wholesome reading.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Glass Bertram 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

William Shakespeare :

'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

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

James Thomson : The Seasons

'Thomas Carter [a nineteenth-century Colchester and London tailor] wrote of "The Seasons" that, "With the exception of the Bible, I know not that I ever read any other book so attentively and regularly. Its beautiful descriptions of nature were delightful to my imagination, while its fine moral reflections [...] were, as I believe, greatly instrumental in promoting my best interests"'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter 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

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

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de Medici

'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

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de Medici

'Continued Roscoe, with much disgust at his shallowness and folly'.

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

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

Girolamo Savonarola : De Veritate Profetica

'Read half through the dialogue de Veritate Profetica'

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

William Shakespeare :

"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

William Wordsworth :

'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

May Sinclair : The Combined Maze

Charlotte Mew 'felt stunned' by May Sinclair's novel "The Combined Maze" (published February 1913), telling Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott, '"it has completely got and kept hold of me"'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Plays including Richard III and King Lear

'Then we write a part of the romance and read some Shakespears [sic]'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

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

William Shakespeare : unknown

'We read Shakespeare'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Excursion, being a portion of the Recluse, a poem

'Calls on Hookham and brings home Wordsworths Excursion of which we read a part - much disappointed - he is a slave'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Unknown

William Wordsworth : The excursion, being a portion of the recluse, a poem

'Mary reads the "Excursion" all day & reads the "History of Margeret" to PBS'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

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

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

[probably] William Prescott : [unknown]

'I read Prescott again and made notes'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

[possibly] William Blackstone : [Commentaries on the laws of England?]

'Finished "Annual Register" for 1832. Reading Blackstone'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : King John

'Reading English History, Reign of George III. Shakespeare's King John.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

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

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

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

William Wordsworth : The white doe of Rylstone

'This is to let you know that I am at present in the classiz neighbourhood of Bolton Abbey whither I was led the other day by some half-remembrance of a note to one of Wordsworth's poems which told with me (to speak the truth) more than the poem itself: said Wordsworth having stated ... that everything which the eyes of man could desire in a lordship was to be found at and about the Abbey aforesaid.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote (probably)

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

Samuel Richardson : unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'Well,? at the Lower Rooms we saw this Woman, ? whose Face carries an affirmation of all this account, ? it is bold, hardened, painted, snuft, leering & impudent! Just such a face as I should Draw for Mrs. Sinclear ? Her Dress, too, was of the same cast, a thin muslin short sacque & Coat lined throughout with Pink, ? a [ital] modesty bit [close ital.] [xxxxx 2 words] ? & something of a [ital.] very [ital.] short cloak half concealed about half of her old wrinkled Neck? the rest was visible to disgust the beholders, ? red Bows and Ribbons in abundance, a Gauze Bonnet tipt on to the top of her Head, & a pair of Mittens! ? We were all curious to see this Queen of Bath, as she is called, on account of the expensive Entertainments she makes, & therefore we got very near to her. . . . a Wretch notorious for all manner of evil: a wretch who, Miss Bowdler has told me, endeavours as much , by dispersing obscene Books, to corrupt youth, as to assist already corrupted maturity in the prosecution of vice!'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'Ask Miss Trimmer when it is have you done Clarissa you will be surprised to see so many little dabs of Letters, but it's silly wit'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book

Thomas Sherlock : Sermons

'I have been keeping rather different hours--though the Priory is far from a late place [...] Wm. [Lady Caroline's husband William Lamb] & I get up about ten or 1/2 after or later [...] have our breakfasts, talk a little, read Newton on the Prophecies with the Bible--having finished Sherlock [...] he goes to eat & walk--I finish dressing & take a drive or little walk [...] then come up stairs where William meets me, & we read Hume with Shakespear till ye dressing bell, then hurry & hardly get dressed by dinner time'.

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'Miss Clarissa Harlowe is just dead & I really am so much discomposed at it & at Lovelaces grief to whom I do not think she behaved quite handsomely that I can prate no more nonsense [...] I have been 3 years & 7 months reading "Clarissa" and have now half another volume to finish'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : unknown

'Sometimes I try if I can talk in that Jargon I us'd to hear but I cannot endure it & the remembrance of what you said puts all they say out--so that men hate me--today at Murrays I heard one read--& it made me sick so did the poem-it is Rogers's. I wish I thought it pretty it affects to [simplicite villagoise?] & the lines about thrushes & love love love--or the manner in which it was read vex'd me--because I wish to admire it'.

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb

Edmund Spenser : 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

Mathew (Monk) Lewis : The Monk

'I have made it [the plot of a novel she is writing] two stories--principle or the Brothers is full of events rather terrific & in Monk Lewis's style--all the people whether the Daemons or the angels male or female act from determination'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Excursion, Being a portion of the Recluse, a poem

'Read the Excursion & Madoc.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

'Mary reads greek & Rassalas in the evening Hookham calls.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown

William Shaw : When I was a child, recollections from an old potter

'The description of his [the character Darius Clayhanger in Clayhanger] labours as a child, and his days in the workhouse, are not drawn from Enoch's own past, but largely from a book by William Shaw published in 1903, called When I was a Child, Recollections of an Old Potter [title in italics]. But Arnold Bennett's knowledge of such matters cannot have been gleaned wholly from books. It must have been in the air.'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book

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

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

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, 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

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

Samuel Dickson : Fallacies of the Faculty: With the Chrono-Thermal System of Medicine

'[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

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

'Yesterday, sitting in Thornie's room I read through all Shakespeare's sonnets'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'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

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Mary Berry to Bertie Greathead, 2 August 1798, on having got to know Mrs Siddons the previous winter: 'She read "Hamlet" to us one evening, in N. Audley-street, which was to me a great treat.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Siddons 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

Thomas Somerville : History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne; with a Dissertation concerning the Danger of the Protestant Succession

Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 12 January 1799: 'Somerville's "Anne" is, I think, more dry than his "William," but clear, distinct, impartial, and wonderfully informing; his chapters on the Union of Scotland are particularly so [goes on to note aspects of Scottish situation during Queen Anne's reign, including rebellious elements ('of none of which circumstances I had before any just idea') and to compare this with current situation in Ireland]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

Thomas Belsham : A Review of Mr. Wilberforce's Practical View of the Prevailing Religious Systems of Professed Christians

Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 3 February 1799: 'In compliance with your request and my own wishes, I have been and am reading with much attention Mr. Wilberforce's book, and likewise strictures on it, in a series of letters by Mr. Belsham'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Unknown

William Sotheby : "The Battle of the Nile"

Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 19 February 1799: 'Mr. Sotheby sent me his "Battle of the Nile." [...] There seems to be a number of good lines in the poem, but the conduct of it is not to me clear'.

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry

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

William Mason : Poems (third volume)

The Dowager Lady Spencer to Mary Berry, from Nuneham (seat of George Simon, second Earl of Harcourt), 21 August 1799: 'Have you ever seen the 3d vol. of Mason's Poems, published two years ago? I never did till I came here; and I have found some sweet things in them, which I have been reading this morning in the flower-garden facing the cinerary urn Lord Harcourt has erected to his memory [goes on to transcribe final six lines of sonnet written by Mason 'in his 70th year'].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: G., Dowager Lady Spencer Print: Book

Madame de Sevigne : Letters

Mary Berry to Mrs Cholmeley, 5 October 1799: 'Mentioning [...] [Madame de Coigny] puts me in mind of a book which I am now [italics]devouring[end italics] with delight, though no new one, and I am now reading it for the third time. I mean Madme de Sevigne's Letters.'

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

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

Thomas Nashe : [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

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

George Norman Douglas : South Wind

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

William Robertson : Histories

'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 [Robert] 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

William Sewell : The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress, of the Christian People Called Quakers

'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

Michael Foster : Textbook of Physiology

'Homer IV. Foster, Physiology'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] 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

Madame De Sevigne : Letters

Mary Berry to a friend, from Nice, March 1803: 'I am reading over for the fiftieth time, I believe, the letters of Madame de Sevigne. They always improve on me, and are [italics]here[end italics] particularly interesting.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

William Spence : England Independent of Commerce

Mary Berry, Journal, 31 January 1808: 'Read through Roscoe's pamphlet and Spence's "England Independent of Commerce."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Unknown

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

Mary Berry, Journal, 21 April 1808: 'In the evening began reading Ashe's "Travels in America", in the north-western settlements, behind the United States.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

Mary Berry, Journal, 22 April 1808: 'In the evening Ashe's Travels [in America] again. They are, I think, very entertaining in spite of an abominable style, which aims at being [italics]fine writing[end italics], without being grammar and without being English. But the wonderful country he describes makes every account of it which one sees and feels is written on the spot, very interesting.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

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 Print: Book

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

Mary Berry, Journal, 27 April 1808: 'In the evening Mrs. D[?amer], and [Thomas] Ashe's Travels [in America].'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

Mary Berry, Journal, 1 May 1808: 'In the evening, [Thomas] Ashe's Travels [in America] as usual.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry Print: Book

Thomas Ashe : Travels in America

Mary Berry, Journal, 6 May 1808: 'Mrs D[?amer] and I finished [Thomas] Ashe's Travels [in America].'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Berry and [?Anne Damer] Print: Book

Monier Monier Williams : [presumably work on Sanskrit]

'Finished Monier Williams'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book

Thomas Malthus : unknown

'Finished Prose Edda, etc. Akkadians. Malthus.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'after dinner began Duffield's translation of Don Quixote and Myers' Wordsworth'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book

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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'My lamp is burning out, and it is time I was going to my chamber fireside, - there to finished the last 1/2 vol of "Clarissa Harlowe" which I have borrowed from Lambton. What a very bad book it is! - and I expected quite the contrary, tho' hating Grandison. Clarissa herself is odious, - with her rash actions suiting so ill with her passionless, reasoning, self-possessed character...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

James Esdaile : Mesmerism in India and its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine [probably]

'you must see Esdaile's book. If there are any sane persons who still doubt "the truth of Mesmerism", that book must cure them, or show them incurable. But you ought to know that it is terribly surgical'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

Samuel Lucas : Secularia; or, Surveys on the Mainstream of History

'Have you read [Mr Lucas's book]? "Secularia; Surveys on the Main Stream of History"... It altogether changes my impressions about the man I correspond with almost every week, and with whom I had lot of conversation here 2 years ago. I have always found him gentlemanly and agreeable, cultivated and liberal &c. &c: but this volume shows him to be (it seems to me) so much more that I am perplexed at not having found it out sooner. It is so fresh, so suggestive, so exceedingly pleasant! and I wanted, as soon as I had done, to begin it again, and read every word twice'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [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

Mark Akenside : [unknown]

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

'A Reverend Mr Darnell followed in this January of 1812. He too read Milton. This time it was Comus, and the whole party joined in, Annabella and her guests taking the various parts. They did the Trial-Scene from the Merchant of Venice too, and she "never heard anyone read with more discriminating judgment than Mr Darnell".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, Rev. Darnell and other house guests Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

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

William Wordsworth : [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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'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

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

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

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'Shelley... brings home Wordsworth's Excursion of which we read a part - much disapointed - He is a slave'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

'Mary reads greek and Rassalas in the evening Hookham calls - M. reads the Sorcerer'.

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

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

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

Germaine de Stael : L'Allemagne (vols 1-3)

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Uvedale Price Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

Mary Berry, Journal, 2 January 1822, during stay at Guy's Cliff: 'Mrs Siddons read "Othello," the two parts of Iago and Othello quite [italics]a merveille[end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Siddons 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 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

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'read Elements of Morality and Smellie'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin 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

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

Thomas Wilson : The arte of Rhetorike, for the use of all such as are studious of Eloquence

'In the preface to Thomas Wilson's "The arte of Rhetorike, for the use of all such as are studious of Eloquence" (1567), the text recounts God's granting the gift of eloquence [to men] [...] Next to this passage Harvey inscribes his symbol for eloquence, the planetary sign of Mercury.'

Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book

Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas : 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

Mary Roberts : Annals of my Village

'Read "Annals of my village" - the month.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book

James [?] Edmeston : The penny magazine

'On looking over "The Penny magazine" I met with the following useful piece by my friend James' [?Edmeston].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Serial / periodical

William Shakespeare : unknown

'My beloved hour of the day was when the [table] cloth was drawn, and I stole away from the dessert, and read Shakspere by firelight in winter in the drawing-room. My mother was kind enough to allow this breach of good family manners; and again at a subsequent time when I took to newspaper reading very heartily [...] Our newspaper was the Globe'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Fairie Queene, The

'Shelley reads the Fairy Queen aloud'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [poems]

'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

William Sherlock : Meditations and A practical discourse concerning death

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'[Robert Owen] told me [Harriet Martineau] that he knew the Bible so well as to have been heartily sick of it in his early youth. He owned that he had never read it since. He promised to read the four Gospels carefeully, if I would read "Hamlet" with a running commentary of Necessarian doctrine in my own mind [...] I fulfilled the engagement'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixotte

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

Thomas James Mathias : The Pursuits of Literature

To Lady Isabella King, Bath March 8th 1798 'Have you read "The Pursuits of Literature"? It is a satirical poem. I dislike satire in general, but this appears to me one of the cleverest books I ever met with, and indeed this is the general opinion respecting it... I have read Robinson on the "Illuminati". It is said by people wel-informed on the subject to be a true representation.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book

Thomas Gisbourne : An enquiry into the duties of men in the higher and middle classes of society in Great Britain

To Miss Hunt Shirley, July 28, 1795 'We have read Mr Gisborne's book aloud ["On the duties of Man"] and all the party was extremely pleased with it.'

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

William Shakespeare : [works]

'At other times we studied Shakespeare, Milton and some other English poets as well as some of the Italians. We took long walks and often drew from nature. We read with great attention the whole of the New Testament, Secker's lectures on the Catechism and several other books on the same important subjects.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book

Thomas Secker : Lectures on Catechism

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book

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

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream

Harriet Martineau, Journal, 16 December 1837: 'Read Midsummer Night's Dream in the evening. Surprised to find how completely I remembered it.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book

Samuel Rosewell : The Arraignment and Tryal of T. Rosewell, for High Treason

'Read over Rosewell's "Life 7 Tryal" 8vo 17[18]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anthony Hammond Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [Poems]

'I do not claim that I understood all Wordsworth's poems but I liked the descriptive parts and committed to memory all the more simple poems, thinking myself like his Lucy: "A maid whom there was none to praise, And very few to love." But I spent so much time, which my mother called "wasted", over the book that she took it away, threatening to burn it.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book

Emmeline Pankhurst : My Own Story

'I have just read "Mrs. Pankhurst's Own Story" and Mrs. Swanwick's autobiography, "I have been Young". Both books show that by this time there was a tremendous demand on the part of women for the franchise'.

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hannah Mitchell Print: Book

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

[James?] Beresford : [On vaccination]

[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: Title = 'On vaccination'; Text [prose followed by verse] = 'A Mr Stewart writing on the Cowpax talks/ gravely of a most horrible case of vaccination/ viz, of a child who in consepquence of it, ran upon/ all fours, bellowing like a cow and butting/ like a bull thus reallizing (says the author/ who quotes the above) the apprehensions of/ the author of Vaccine Phantasmogoria and who exclaims/ O Mosely thy books mighty phantasies rousing/ Full oft make me quake for my heart's dearest treasures/ ...' [total = 2 x 4 line verses]

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown

James Hyslop : The Cameronian's Dream

'I came across a piece of verse which exercised a lasting influence on my taste. It was called "The Cameronian's Dream" and it had been written by a certain James Hyslop...' [ more for 2 paras]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

?for Hamlet & the trifling of his favour Hold it a fashion and a Toy in blood; A violet in the youth of primy nature Forward not permanent ? sweet not lasting The perfume and suppliance of a minute No more ?.. [Lamb?s own ellipses] Rest not perturb?d spirit? [writing in another direction on the other half of the sheet she continues] ?O dear Ophelia wherefore doubt me --I have not art to win thee but this I know I love thee best O most best ? believe it adieu. Hamlet?

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb

William Shakespeare : Othello

'I did not move from my chair but reached for a book. Picked up a Shakespeare and read the closing scene, "Othello".'

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

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Bowly group

William Shakespeare : The Works of Mr William Shakespeare; in six volumes

'I do not care for a First Folio ofShakespeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, which did. [...] Winter evenings-the world shut out-with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale- These two poets [Shakespeare and Milton] youcannot avoid reading aloud-to your-self or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one-and it degenerates into an audience.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets

'a wet day have finished the life of savage in Johnsons "lives of the poets"'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

James Beresford : The Miseries of Human Life

'I have been dipping into "the miserys of human life" here & there'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Thomas Erskine : Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth

'Got a parcel from London "Eltons Brothers" "Allins Grammar" gifts of the authors: and Esrkines "internal evidences of religion" the gift of Lord Radstock [...] a very sensible book this passage struck me which I first opend - "to walk without God in the world is to walk in sin & sin is the way of danger..."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Midsummer Night's Dream

'Read in Shakspear "The Midsummer Nights Dream" for the first time - I have still got 3 parts out of 4 plays to read yet and hope I shall not leave the world without reading them'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry The Fifth

'read Shakspears "Henry The Fifth" of which I have always been very fond from almost a boy I first met with it in an odd vol which I got for 6d [...] I can never lay it down till I see the end of it'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'Read "Macbeth" what a soul thrilling power hovers about this tragedy I have read it over about twenty times'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Thomas Erskine : Remarks on the Internal Evidence

'Read in the afternoon Erskines "Evidence of Revealed Religion" and find in it some of the best reasoning in favour of its object I have ever read...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

James Thomson : The Seasons (Winter)

'Lookd into Thompsons Winter there is a freshness about it I think superior to the others [...] the following minute descriptions are great favourites of mine [...] [he misquotes ll 104-5, 130-31]'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Thomas Tusser : Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry

'Read in old Tusser with whose quaint ryhmes I have often been entertaind [...] he seems to have felt a taste for inclosures and Mavor that busy notemaker and book compiler [...] has added an impertinent note [...] as an echo of feint praise'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'read some pages in Shakspear - turnd over a few leaves of knoxes essays'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Matthew Habershon : [unknown]

'It was the explanation, the perfectly prosaic and positive explanation, of all these wonders which drew them to study the Habershons and the Newtons whose books they so much enjoyed.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip and Emily Gosse Print: Book

Michael Scott : Tom Cringle's Log

'climbing to the top of a bookcase, [he] brought down a thick volume and presented it to me. "You'll find all about the Antilles there", he said, and left me with "Tom Cringle's Log" in my possession. [explains mother's attitude to fiction and why he'd never read any till now] So little did I understand what was allowable in the way of literary invention that I had began the story without a doubt that it was true, and I think it was my Father himself who, in answer to an inquiry, explained to me that it was "all made up". He advised me to read the descriptions of the sea, and of the mountains of Jamaica, and "skip" the pages which gave imaginary adventures and conversations. But I did not take his counsel; these latter were the flower of the book to me.' [more account on pp.143-4]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Merchant of Venice

'Accordingly, it was announced that the reading of Shakespeare would be one of our lessons, and on the following afternoon we began "The Merchant of Venice". There was one large volume, and it was handed about the class; I was permitted to read the part of Bassanio, and I set forth, with ecstatic pipe ... I was in the seventh heaven of delight, but alas! We had only reached the second act of the play, when the readings mysteriously stopped. I never knew the cause, but I suspect it was at my Father's desire. He prided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare...'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

Samuel Boyse : The Deity

'...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, 'In the "Deity" I took a kind of persistant penitential pleasure.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

Samuel Boyse : The Deity

'On the day in question, I was unable to endure the drawing-room meeting to its close, but, clutching my volume of the Funeral Poets, I made a dash for the garden...Then I opened my book for consolation, and read a great block of pompous verse out of "The Deity", in the midst of which exercise, yielding to the softness of the hot and aromatic air, I fell fast asleep.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces. This I read through and through, not disdaining the help of the notes, and revelling in the glossary. I studied "The Tempest" as I had hitherto studied no classic work, and it filled my whole being with music and romance. This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume here and there. I completed "The Merchant of Venice", read "Cymbeline", "Julius Caesar", and "Much Ado"; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this time intelligently, aquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of a single play, "The Tempest", in a school edition, prepared, I suppose, for one of the university examinations which were then being instituted in the provinces...This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest of Shakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually I contrived to borrow a volume there. I completed "The Merchant of Venice", read "Cymbeline", "Julius Caesar", and "Much Ado"; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for a long time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all the colours of sunrise.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book

M. de Secondat, Baron de Montequieu : Spirit of Laws

Two very long quotations: 1. 'Speech is as subject to interpretation there is so great a difference between indescretion and malice...' 2. 'Mythology. The promiscuous assemblage of truth and fiction would long since have been universally exploded...'

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

William Wordsworth : The Excursion

'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

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

'one day in Kirkwall my brother Johnnie, who had gone to work in a shop there, gave me three pennies to spend, and I went at once to the bookseller's which sold "The Penny Poets" and bought "As You Like It", "The Earthly Paradise", and a selection of Matthew Arnold's poems. ...I did not get much out of the selection of Arnold's poems... "As You Like It" delighted me, but it was "The Earthly Paradise" that I read over and over again.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book

William Morris : The Earthly Paradise

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'When, a year or two later, we read "Julius Caesar" at school, I recognised the scene immediately... I did not find it very funny, but I recognised its authenticity. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about: he had met people like my Uncle Tom.'

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

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'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

William Wordsworth : [poems extracts]

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

Samuel Johnson : [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

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'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

Edmund Spenser : Faery Queene

'This preoccupation with the sensuous form I experienced most obviously and acutely when I read with mounting excitement Spenser's "Faery Queen".'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson 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

Thomas Clarkson : History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade

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

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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Papillon Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Coningsby; or, The new generation

'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

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'Finished the "Epicurean" by Moore, it is a sad story but very prettily written; began to read the play of "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare as I had all night, I was able to stay up till late - learning by heart "Paradise & the Peri"'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book

William Morris : [prose works]

'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

William Morris : The Story of the Unknown Church

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Stamper Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Measure for Measure

"Been reading Shakespeare's plays. viz "Measure for Measure" "Much Ado About Nothing" -'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Much Ado About Nothing

'Been reading Shakespeare's plays. viz "Measure for Measure" "Much Ado About Nothing" -'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book

Madeleine de Scuderi : Artamene, ou Le grand Cyrus

'I fell a-reading in Fuller's "history of Abbys" and my wife in "Grand Cyrus" till 12 at night, and so to bed.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book

Emanuel Tesauro : Patriarche, sive Christi servatoris genealogia, per mundi aetates traducta

'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

Thomas Cross : Sternhold and Hopkins Psalms

'So soon as word was brought me that Mr Coventry was come with the barge to the Tower, I went to him and find him reading of the psalmes in short-hand (which he is now busy about); and had good sport about the long marks that are made there for sentences in Divinity, which he is never like to make use of.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Coventry 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

Thomas Hobbes : Of libertie and necessitie

'So to bed, with my mind cheery upon it; and lay long reading Hobbs his "liberty and necessity", and a little but a very shrewd piece.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Thomas Sherlock : Several Discourses Preached at the Temple Church

'I am very fond of Sherlock's Sermons, prefer them to almost any.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Laetitia Matilda Hawkins : Rosanne; or, a Father's Labour Lost

'We have got "Rosanne" in our Society, and find it much as you describe it; very good and clever, but tedious. Mrs Hawkins' great excellence is on serious subjects. There are some very delightful conversations and reflections on religion: but on lighter topics I think she falls into many absurdities; and, as to love, her heroine has very comical feelings. There are a thousand improbabilities in the story. Do you remember the two Miss Ormesdens, introduced just at last? Very flat and unnatural. - Mlle Cossart is rather my passion.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Laetitia Matilda Hawkins : Rosanne; or, a Father's Labour Lost

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Lefroy Print: Book

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

Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas : Divine weekes and workes

'My wife and I spent a good deal of this evening in reading Du' Bartas's "Imposture" and other parts, which my wife of late have taken up to read, and is very fine as anything I meet with.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas : Divine weekes and workes

'My wife and I spent a good deal of this evening in reading Du' Bartas's "Imposture" and other parts, which my wife of late have taken up to read, and is very fine as anything I meet with.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book

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

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

Samuel Pepys : [Sea Manuscript]

'So to the office till 10 at night upon business, and numbering and examining part of my Sea=manuscript with great pleasure - my wife sitting working by me.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

William Shakespeare : unknown

'January 18. No letters: strike still on. A fine day. But what is that to me? I am an invalid. I spend my life in bed. Read Shakespeare in the morning. I feel I cannot bear this silence to-day. I am haunted by thoughts.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : All's Well that Ends Well

'Shakespeare Notes. All's Well that Ends Well. The First Lord is worth attending to.... Hamlet: ...But I could write a thousand pages about Hamlet...Miranda and Juliet: To say that Juliet and Miranda might very well be one seems to me to show a lamentable want of perception... Romeo and Juliet ...When the old nurse cackles of leaning against the dove-house wall it's just as though a beam of sunlight struck through the curtains and discovered her sitting there in the warmth with a tiny staggerer...Twelfth Night...Oh, doesn't that reveal the thoughts of all those strange creatures who attend upon the lives of others! Antony and Cleopatra...Marvellous words!...A creature like Cleopatra always expects to be paid for things.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'January 3...I read "The Tempest". The papers came. I over-read them. Tell the truth. I did no work. In fact I was more idle and hateful than ever..."The Tempest" seems to me astonishing this time. When one reads the same play again, it is never the same play.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

'January 4...I have read a good deal of "Cosmic Anatomy" and understood it far better. Yes, such a book does fascinate me. Why does J. [Middleton Murry] hate it so? To get a glimpse of the relation of things - to follow that relation and find it remains true through the ages enlarges my little mind as nothing else does. It's only a greater view of psychology....Read Shakespeare.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

'January 6... Read Shakespeare, read "Cosmic Anatomy", read The Oxford Dictionary.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

'January 7... I read "Cosmic Anatomy", Shakespeare and the Bible. Jonah.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

Naomi Jacobs : [early works]

'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

John Monk Saunders : A Yank at Oxford

'I've read one book since the war "A Yank At Oxford". I liked that.....'

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

James Ussher : A body of divinitie

'Thence to the Temple and sat there till one a-clock, reading at Playford's in Dr Ushers "Body of Divinity" his discourse of the Scripture; which is as much, I believe, as is anywhere said by any man, but yet there is room to cavill, if a man would use no faith to the tradition of the Church in which he is born; which I think to be as good as any argument as most is brought for many things, and it may be for that, among others.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

[Thomas] [Southland] : Love a la mode

'So home to dinner alone. And then to read a little and so to church again, where the Scott made an ordinary sermon; and so home to my office and there read over my vowes, and encreased them by a vow against all strong drink till November next, of any sort of Quantity... Then I fell to read over a silly play, writ by a person of Honour (which is, I find, as much to say a coxcombe) called "Love a la mode".'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Adam Olearius : The voyages and travels of the ambassadors from the Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia

'I went to the Temple and there spent my time in a bookseller's shop, reading in a book of some Embassages into Moscovia, &c., where was very good reading.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Love a Cheate

'This evening, being in an humour of making all things even and clear in the world, I tore some old paper; among others, a Romance which (under the title of "Love a Cheate") I began ten year ago at Cambridge; and at this time, reading it over tonight, I liked it very well and wondered a little at myself at my vein at that time when I wrote it, doubting that I cannot do so well now if I would try.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

William Shakespeare : unknown

'February 5. Wrote at my story, read Shakespeare, Read Goethe, thought, prayed.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Mansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [works]

'I was repelled at home, rather than encouraged to read, and I never remember to have seen a book in my elders' hands. Literature was limited to the "Daily Telegraph". To read in secret I escaped to the washhouse, and I well remember during my early apprentice days at Spitalfields, my grandfather, catching a sight of me reading there a copy of Dicks's shilling edition of Shakespeare - the whole, a marvellous feat of cheap publishing -sternly reproachful, exclaimed: "Ah, Tom, that'll never bring you bread and cheese!"'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Okey Print: Book

[Thomas Peckett] [Prest] : Sweeney Todd the Barber

'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

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

Miss Reynolds : unknown

'Madam, I have read the paper you were kind enough to forward to me, and very much regret that I cannot avail myself of it. It is not in a style of composition which would be serviceable to the Miscellany of which I am the Editor, neither is it in my power to commence any new series of papers just now. I trust you will not feel hurt by this communication; be assured that I am perfectly sensible both of the kind womanly feeling which pervades your little tale, and of the excellence of the motive which prompted you to write it.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Unknown

Thomas Gaspey : The Grand Juror

'My Dear Sir, As you have long since ceased to be ?a colt? in the periodical paddock, you will not be surprised at my not having been able to find room in the next No. for that same paper. If you will leave it in my good keeping until the 28th. (February is a short month) we will astonish the Grand Jurors with it. I have laughed very heartily over it, and although I have never served (for I always pay my taxes when they won?t call any longer, in order to get a bad name in the parish and so escape all honors) I can see it is true to the life.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [contract]

'And after dinner to the Change a little and then to Whitehall, where anon the Duke of York came and a Committee we had of Tanger; where I read over my rough draft of the contract for Tanger Victualling and acquainted them with the death of Mr Alsopp...'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

Samuel Pepys : [contract]

'We read over the contract together and discoursed it well over and so parted'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

Samuel Pepys : [contract]

'We read over the contract together and discoursed it well over and so parted'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Andrews Manuscript: Sheet

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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

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

Samuel Johnson : Prayers and Meditations [?]

J.H. Ewing's diary entry, July 23: 'Johnson's Meditations'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Juliana Horatia Ewing Print: Book

Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de Genlis : L'amour maternelle

'After supper [Mama] read us "L'amour maternelle" of Mde. de Genlis.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Agathe Wynne Print: Unknown

Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de Genlis : Zelie

'Mama read the story of Mde. de Genlis to us that is called "Zelie" or the "Ingenue" it is very fine. I like it the best of all the pieces by that author.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Agathe Wynne Print: Unknown

Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de Genlis : Olympe et Theophile

'This evening we read "Olympe and Theophile" (by Mde. de G.) We all cried so much there was not one of us that was capable of reading. [Eugenia says: 'Mesdames de Bombelles and de Regis, Mde. de B, Lou Bitche and Betsi all wept there wass but me that was firm']' [square bracketed text added by editor]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: the Wynne family and friends, including Betsey, Eugenia and several women 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

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

Madeleine de Scudery : Artamene; ou, Le Grand Cyrus

'I know you will pitty Poore Amestris strangly when you have read her Stoory[.] i'le swear I cryed for her when I read it first though shee were an imaginary person, and sure if any thing of that kinde can deserve it her misfortunes may.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Osborne Print: BookManuscript: Letter

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

Thomas a Kempis : The Imitation of Jesus Christ

'I spent the evening reading with Mama "the Imitation of Jesus Christ" until supper'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'Sunday, 14th March, Discussion Group ? ?Stunt? rehearsal. Also 1st rehearsal of ?Good Friday? which will draw half our members. Reading ?Hamlet" ? the first time I have read it with any attempt at real comprehension.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

Edmond Holmes : The Tragedy of Education

'Monday, 29th March, A 21st birthday party at the Roberts?. Pleaded illness and got off. My clothes will hardly do. Bought Ira ?Far from the Madding Crowd?. Wrote Adana people re printing press. Have decided on a course for the Club next year ? ?The English Historical Novel??a study of English history, manners and institutions. A lot can be done with this if the books are carefully chosen. Read -- ?the Tragedy of Education (Edmond Holmes)'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As you Like it

'Monday, 5th April, I am cast for Amieus in ?As you like it?. I was looking over my script today. Not very much but nice. ?Under the Greenwood Tree? and ?Blow, blow thou Winter Wind? are my songs. I shall enjoy it.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

May Sinclair : Mr Waddington of Wyck

'Tuesday 6th July. ?Mr Waddington of Wyck? ? (May Sinclair). Back to the office today and find that young Reid has done pretty well. Kept my work fairly up-to-date. He has also kept quiet re-meeting my family last week. Smith is back too, after a quiet fortnight and he recommends Louis Golding to me. He (Smith) is reading ?Sicilian Noon?. I must try also that thing I have heard so much about ?Lolly Willowes? by Sylvia Townsend Warner. '

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'Saturday 10th July ?Henry IV? ? (Shakespeare ? bought it yesterday, Temple 2 vols)'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil

'Thursday 29th July ?Sybil? ? (Disraeli) [...] I went to see Mother tonight and completed the preliminary draft for my syllabus on the Historical novel.'

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

Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil

'Monday 16th August ?John Inglesant? ? (J.H. Shorthouse). I finished Sybil and think it certainly is a fine book for our syllabus purposes.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book

Thomas Pearson : Infidelity; its Aspects, Causes and Agencies

'We found some of the prisoners here engaged in reading, while waiting till the officers returned from their breakfast. One was perusing a treatise on "Infidelity; its Aspects, Causes and Agencies"; another the "Home Friend - a weekly miscellany"; a third, the "Saturday Magazine"; a fourth, the "History of Redemption"; and a fifth, the "Family Quarrel - an humble story".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

May Sinclair : The Tree of Heaven

'Saturday 6th November. ?The Tree of Heaven? - (May Sinclair). Bad day on the Round, but Dad has done well. Mother is ill and expect to have to go to hospital. We yarned about the Aldermania elections. If the Labour Party in Birkenhead watch their step they will have a majority after the Alderman elections.'

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

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

Thomas Vladesco : [article on Henrik Ibsen]

'28th September 1928 (Friday). I have been reading an article on Ibsen by Thomas Vladesco in the ?Mercure de France?. The writer sets out to prove Ibsen a bon bourgeois, a person with a wholesome respect for human institutions who merely created ?characters? and balanced individualisms. Whilst to my mind, thus denuding Ibsen of all the greatness, which the world has attributed to him, the writer claims rather to be clearing him of false and foul charges of anarchism, so heightening his renown by a purification of his ideas and intentions. The article is a rank failure. The writer proves nothing, ?clears? Ibsen of all sorts of ?charges? which no thinking reader makes against him, and gives him a philosophy, small, and shallow, which a most superficial acquaintance with his work would show to be untrue of the dramatist. Even the oft repeated claim that he belauds individualism is unsound. What Ibsen does do is to show in ?Peer Gynt? and in ?Brand? that both by individualistic and by self-effacing methods of life man fails to attain the goal. Man?s end is failure (though perhaps a great failure). He sets the question and there leaves it. Ibsen is a questioner. In that, Shaw goes beyond him, for Shaw has always an answer though it is Shaw?s answer.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Newspaper

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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her mother, Jane Sewell (nee Edwards; married 1802): 'She must have been naturally very clever; for, although she had received little or no education, her knowledge of books, and her memory for poetry and apt quotations, were quite remarkable. She often talked to us of her studies as a girl; how she used not only to devour novels, and read Sir Charles Grandison every winter, but how she also taught herself a little French, learned by heart long passages from the great poets, sometimes read history, and especially delighted in Bayley's Dictionary, with its long meanings and rules for pronunciation.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : The Rambler

'My chief acquaintance with the writers of the eighteenth century is derived from reading to Aunt Lyddy papers in the [italics]Spectator[end italics] and [italics]The Rambler[end italics], Mason's plays, Addison's [italics]Cato[end italics], etc. This we were often called to do when we were invited to dine with Aunt Clarke [reader's great-aunt, to whom "Lyddy," Sewell's father's unmarried sister, a companion].'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Serial / periodical

William Russell : History of Modern Europe

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

William Robertson : History of Charles the Fifth

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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

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

William Shakespeare : works

'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

Laetitia Matilda Hawkins : The Countess and Gertrude

Elizabeth Missing Sewell on a stay at her aunt Mrs Hanbury's London house during late 1835: 'The house and the situation [John Street, Bedford Row] were alike dreary [...] The only gleam of romance I had in connection with the place was derived from the fact that the large bare house reminded me of a description of one like it in an old novel by Miss Hawkins --"The Countess and Gertrude".'

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

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Stories on the Lord's Prayer

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Amy Herbert

Elizabeth Missing Sewell, on the start of her writing career: 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 Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Stories on the Lord's Prayer

Elizabeth Missing Sewell, on the anonymity of her first publication ("Stories on the Lord's Prayer", serialised in "The Cottager's Monthly Visitor" in 1840): 'I did not give my name, and no one knew anything about it, except my mother and sisters. I have often vexed myself since -- thinking that I did not tell my father -- but I had a dread of any person talking to me about my writing, and I knew that if he was pleased he would not be able to keep himself from telling me so. I was reading the little book aloud to my mother one evening when he was in the room, and not being well was lying on the sofa half asleep, as I thought; but he listened, and I think was interested, for he asked me what I was reading. I forget exactly what answer I made, but it certainly was not that I was reading anything of my own, and so I lost the opportunity of giving him pleasure.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Amy Herbert

Elizabeth Missing Sewell, on her mother's admiration for her writings: 'After my father's death, the only reading, except the Bible, which, for weeks, she would listen to, was "Amy Herbert"'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Sewell Print: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Amy Herbert

Elizabeth Missing Sewell, on her family's encouragement of her writing: 'William [Sewell's brother] had arranged to have the "Stories from the Lord's Prayer" published as a little book [...] This made Ellen [Sewell's sister] speak to him about "Amy Herbert". He looked at the first chapters, and liked them, and begged me to finish the story.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : 'little history of the early Church'

Elizabeth Missing Sewell on support received in the face of criticisms of her novel [italics]Margaret Percival[end italics] for its supposedly Roman Catholic sympathies: 'My one consolation, when criticised, was, and is, that the statement of the historical grounds on which the English Church rests were [sic] privately approved by [...] the Rev. Samuel Rickards, rector of Stowlangtoft, Essex [...] Mr. Rickards also advised me to write a little history of the early Church, which I afterwards did. He saw part of it, and liked it.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rickards

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : The Earl's Daughter

'[italics]The Earl's Daughter[end italics] was [...] begun before my mother's death, and I read part of it to her, but she saw from the beginning that it was likely to be sad, and I think it rather oppressed her. [italics]Margaret Percival[end italics] I read to her entirely, and also a portion of [italics]Laneton Parsonage[end italics], and I remember being obliged to assure her that Alice Lennox (in the latter tale) when taken ill would not die, she took such a vivid interest in the story -- which was only completed after her death.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Margaret Percival

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Laneton Parsonage

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

William Russell : History of Modern Europe

'We finished today to read Russels "Modern History", which is perfectly well wrote and in a very intertaining [sic] manner'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book

James Thomson : [a tragedy]

'I read today an English Tragedy by Thomson that pleased me much and made me like that author's works'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'I staid at home and read "Charles Grandison" that we have in French a charming book'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'The Day was beautifull and I enjoyed the sweetness of the weather in riding walking and sitting out in the fields with a book - "Charles Grandisson" I am but at the second volume much amuses me I have begun to read also in English Robertsons history of America and Blairs lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres - We have bought these books at Basle where they are well printed and cheap'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book

William Robertson : The History of America

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'I read of "Grandisson" - That Book pleases and interests me very much'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) 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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'I have done to read "Grandisson" that book has amused me vastly'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Book

William Robertson : The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI till his Accession to the Crown of England

'Rain again and rain forever. I read a great deal of Robertson's "History of Scotland". I cannot forgive Elizabeth's behaviour and though Mary's is very shameful yet I cannot help feeling a sort of partiality for her, a partiality which is a tribute that I pay to her endless misfortunes and which prompts me to think that if Elizabeth had sought protection in Mary's arms she would have found a sure azylum and a hasty succour there. Robertson in giving Mary's character, perfectly expressed what you must feel in reading her history. "You throw a veil over her frailties and faults, and approve of your tears as if they were shed for an object who drew much nearer to protection".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Eugenia Wynne 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

William Shakespeare : [works]

'I have read the whole of Shakespeare several times and the character with whom I have most sympathy is poor Hamlet, the introvert, the dreamer!'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book

Thomas [?] Hughes : [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

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Katherine Ashton

Elizabeth Missing Sewell on the model for the domineering husband Colonel Forbes, in her novel [italics]Katherine Ashton[end italics]: 'Colonel Forbes has not in appearance, position and surroundings the least resemblance to his prototype; yet that the character is in the main true was shown to me strangely by the fact that the gentleman who gave me the idea of it came to me after he had read [italics]Katherine Ashton[end italics] and owned that Colonel Forbes resembled himself, though no one else ever suggested the likeness.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: 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

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

'It was about noon, and the officers had all gone home to their dinners, when, as I sat on my stool munching my loaf and reading Boswell's "Life of Dr Johnson", I heard a shuffling of feet outside and my cell-door was thrown open by the patrol'

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

William Shakespeare : Merry Wives of Windsor

'Drew my chair to the door, sat down in the sun, and spent an hour or two in reading the "Merry Wives of Windsor". Thank God for Shakespeare at any rate. Baron Lefroy cannot sentence Shakespeare to death, nor so much as mulct him for damages, though I am told he deserves it for defamation of character, in the case of Sir John Falstaff.'

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

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

William Shakespeare : [various titles]

'With Shakespeare also I hold much gay and serious intercourse; and I have read, since coming here, three or four dialogues of Plato, with the critical diligence of a junior sophister. The "Politeia", indeed, as a gentle exercise of my mind, I am writing out in literal bald English; which I do chiefly with a view to compel myself to read Greek accurately, and not to gobble it, bones and all.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

'Read "Antony and Cleopatra".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel Print: Book

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Laneton Parsonage

From letter to Elizabeth Missing Sewell reproduced in [italics]The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell[end italics], written in 1889 by the Rev. J. J. Lias, to accompany a copy of one of his own published writings: 'I am sending this book in recognition of invaluable help rendered by you to me nearly half a century ago [...] When I first fell in with [italics]Laneton Parsonage[end italics] I was in a stage of sentimental evangelicalism in which the reading of good works and thinking of (perhaps) good thoughts was to me the whole of religion. When my tutor gave me [italics]Laneton Parsonage[end italics], its doctrine of baptismal grace and privileges at once inspired me [...] I never became an advanced High Churchman, but my sympathies have been with the common-sense practical Churchmanship you have taught in your books -- a Catholic Christianity which holds fast the Word of God and the Creeds, and honours the Sacraments.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: J. J. Lias Print: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Preparation for the Holy Communion

From letter to Eleanor L. Sewell reproduced in [italics]The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell[end italics], written on 15 December 1906 by Miss [E.] Wordsworth , in response to appeal for thoughts and reminiscences regarding Sewell and her works: 'We are all apt to forget how much good there was in England before "Tractarianism" had become a potent influence in the Church. There is one little book [of Sewell's] that I should like to name [...] [italics]Preparation for the Holy Communion[end italics] by the author of [italics]Amy Herbert[end italics] [sic]. It was given me years ago, and I have found it very helpful. There is an earnestness and sobriety [...] in its tone, which makes it very suitable for many who would shrink from making use of the less restrained phraseology of more modern manuals.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wordsworth Print: Book

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : works

Eleanor L. Sewell, niece of Elizabeth Missing Sewell, in chapter 20 of [italics]The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell[end italics]: 'I think I had read all her books when at the age of fifteen [...] I was drifted under her [personal] influence.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor L. Sewell Print: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : works

Eleanor L. Sewell, niece of Elizabeth Missing Sewell, in chapter 20 of [italics]The Autobiography of Elizabeth Missing Sewell[end italics]: 'Among many casual instances [of Elizabeth Missing Sewell's influence] is that of a girl who was detained at the foot of the Lollards' Tower, Lambeth, and showing her impatience of delay, was addressed by a little lady, who was also waiting her turn with a party, and asked to spend the time in learning more about the Lollards and the locality. The girl afterwards saw the lady's name in the visitors' book, was led to read her works and learnt for life the love of study, though she never met Miss Sewell again.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Unknown

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

William Watson : Ode on the Day of the Coronation of King Edward VII

`My dear Watson: Who would have supposed that I should write to thank you for your considerateness in sending the Ode, in such circumstances as the present. If the Coronation should never come off, future generations will add a footnote to the verses - then no longer copywright! - to remind readers of their remarkable history; which though it will not increase the value of what is intrinsially so fine, will lend a curious secondary intersst to them. However, as the Coronation will probably happen after all, it is useless to speculate in this way. I will not attempt to criticise. All I can say is that the Ode struck me on a first reading & still impresses me, as being a piece of your very highest work; & to reach the level of your former productions is no mean achievement. Ideas & execution are singularly sustained throughout. I cannot find any place where they dip or falter: & my regret at coming to the last page was that there was no more of the poem. Believe me Sincerely yours Thomas Hardy`

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Hardy Print: Unknown, Probably a pamphlet or book

William Forbes-Mitchell : Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-9

'I have just returned from reading a chapter of your book to my wife and her daughter. There was not a dry eye at the table, and the reader had to suspend operations, choking upon sobs. They were tears of pride and sympathy. I beg to offer you this family anecdote as a testimony to the success of your reminiscences. Of making books there is said to be no end, and I have made many. But if I could only think once, before I died, that I had given so much and such noble pleasure to a reader, I should be more than rewarded. You have made me proud and glad to be a Scotsman.'

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

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

William Shakespeare : Measure for Measure

'Sat alone all the evening and read two Shakespeare's plays, "Measure for Measure" and "Henry the 6th".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Fremantle Print: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Henry VI

'Sat alone all the evening and read two Shakespeare's plays, "Measure for Measure" and "Henry the 6th".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Fremantle Print: Unknown

William Shakespeare : [Works]

'Have you read Shakespear? If you have not, then I desire you, read it directly, and tell me what you think of him -which is his masterpiece. He is always excellent'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical, Unknown

James Beresford : Miseries of Human Life

'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

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

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

Adam Smith : The Wealth of Nations

'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

Henry Home, Lord Kames : Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book

Thomas Simpson : A Treatise of Fluxions

'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

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

Thomas Chalmers : A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, Viewed in Connection with Modern Astronomy

'But Dr Chalmers, it would seem, is fearful lest these speculations [on the nature of the universe] lead us away from Christianity and has written a volume of discourses to prove that the insignificance of our planet in the universe is no argument against the truth of religion. Orthodox men declare, of course, that he has completely discomfited his opponents - I read it sometime ago - It abounds in that fiery thoroughgoing stile of writing for which the Author is so remarkable: nevertheless his best argument seems to be, that as it is in the scriptures, we have no business to think about it [at] all - an argument which was well enough known to be a panacea in cases of that nature - before his volume saw the light. '

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book

Thomas Chalmers : [article on paperism in Edinburgh 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

Matthew Lewis : The Monk

'The other night I sat up till four o'clock, reading Matthew Lewis's "Monk". It is the most stupid & villainous novel that I have read for a great while. Considerable portions of it are grossly indecent[,] not to say brutish - one does not care a straw about one of the characters - and tho' "little Mat" has legions of ghosts & devils at his bidding - one views their movements with profound indifference.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle 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

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Unknown

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

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

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

William Roscoe : The life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificant

'Began with eagerness, and read, with increasing avidity, the first four Chapters of Roscoe's "Life of Lorenzo de Medici"...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

'Pursued Boswell's "life of Johnson"....'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

Thomas Sheridan : Life of Swift

'Finished Sheridan's "Life of Swift"....'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Robertson : History of Scotland

'Finished Robertson's "History of Scotland"...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Robertson : History of Charles V.

'Finished Robertson's "History of Scotland"....'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Robertson : History of America

'Finished the first three Books of Robertson's "America"...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

Adam Smith : Essays on philosophical subjects

'Read Adam Smith's "History of Astronomy", in his posthumous tracts, published by Dugald Stewart...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

Thomas James Mathias : Pursuits of Literature

'Finished, with much interest, the "Pursuits of Literature"...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Wollaston : Religion of Nature delineated

'Began, and read the first section of, Wollaston's "Religion of Nature"...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : London

'Perused Johnson's "London", and "Vanity of Human Wishes". His Numbers are strong in sense, and smooth in flow; but want that varied grace, and inextinguishable spirit, which constitute the essential charm of Pope's...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Vanity of Human Wishes

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de Medici

'Concluded a second reading of Roscoe's "Lorenzo de Medici", which fades considerably on a reperusal...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Russell : The History of Modern Europe

'Finished the 2d. Vol. of Russell's "History of Modern Europe"...'

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

Samuel Johnson : Preface to Shakespeare

'Looked over Johnson's vigorous defence of Shakespear against the charge of violating, whether from neglect or disdain, the Unities of Time and Place in his Dramas...'

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

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

'Finished a cursory perusal of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", with a view to the principles on which his critical decisions are founded...'

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

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

James Ussher : An introduction to the theory of the human mind

'Read with much interest, in a Collection of Fugitive Pieces, an "Introduction to the Theory of the Human Mind", by J. Usher, author of Clio....'

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

Soame Jenyns : A free inquiry into the nature and origin of evil

'Read Soame Jenyns' "Origin of Evil". His grand solution of the introduction of evil is, that it could not have been prevented, by Omnipotence, without the loss of some superior good...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Richardson : A philosophical analysis and illustration of some of Shakespeare's characters

'Read Richardson's "Philosophical Analysis" of some of Shakespear's Characters. The design is happy, and, upon the whole, ingeniously executed...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Jackson of Exeter : The four ages; together with essays on various subjects

'Read Jackson's (of Exeter) "Four Ages". He inverts the usual order; and promises halycon days, from the improvement of every art and every science, in the golden age to which we are rapidly advancing...'

Century: 1700-1799 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

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

Soame Jenyns : The works of Soame Jenyns, Esq

'Finished the two first Volumes of Soame Jenyns "Works", edited by Cole...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

James Boswell : The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

'Dipped into Boswell's "Life of Johnson". Johnson pronounces Hume either mad or a liar...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book

William Thomson : The New Testament. Translated from the Greek, 3 vols

'I received about a month ago the Revd Willm Thomson of Ochiltree's new translation of the Testament. Of course I am no judge of his 'new renderings'; but the stile both of writing & thinking displayed in those parts which I have looked at, is dull & sluggish as the clay itself. He brags of having altered the expressions of the old translation - every body I suppose will readily admit this - and be ready to wish him joy of all the honour than [that] can arise from such alterations...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : Human Life

'Rogers is in an indescribable agony about his poem. The Hollands have read and like it. The verses on paestum are said to be beautiful. The whole poem is not more than 800 lines. Fazackerly thinks it poor meagre stuff; Luttrell approves it; I have not seen it'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Holland Print: Unknown

Samuel Rogers : Human Life

'Rogers is in an indescribable agony about his poem. The Hollands have read and like it. The verses on Paestum are said to be beautiful. The whole poem is not more than 800 lines. Fazackerly thinks it poor meagre stuff; Luttrell approves it; I have not seen it'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Nicholas Fazackerly Print: Unknown

Samuel Rogers : Human Life

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: Unknown

Samuel Rogers : Human Life

'Rogers has at length appeared; an old friend must be a good poet; but without reference to this feeling there are some good descriptions - the Mother and Child, Mr Fox at St Annes and a few more. The beginning of the verses at Paestum are good, but there are many lines and couplets all over the poem quite unintelligible; particularly I recommend your attention to those verses on a sleeping boy on the 2d or 3d page - what is meant by the emmets and the wrens?'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Unknown

James McIntosh : [Review in Edinburgh Review of Bentham's Plan of Parliamentary Refom]

'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

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

William Pitt Scargill [anon.] : Elizabeth Evanshaw

'I have received from you within these few months some very polite and liberal presents of new publications ; and though I was sorry you put yourself to any expense on my account, yet I was flattered by this mark of respect and good-will from gentlemen to whom I am personally unknown. I am quite sure, however, that you overlooked the purpose and tendency of a work called Elizabeth Evanshaw, or that you would not have sent it to a clergyman of the Established Church, or indeed to a clergyman of any church. [Smith then rebukes the publishers at length for producing irreligious books, including a translation of Voltaire, before going on to say that, nevertheless] I shall read all the works and tell you my opinion of them from time to time. I was very much pleased with the "Two Months in Ireland", but did not read the poetical part; the prosaic division of the work is very good'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book

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

Adam Smith : [unknown]

'I have read since I saw you Burke's works, some books of Homer, Suetonius, a great deal of agricultural reading, Godwin's "Enquirer", and a great deal of Adam Smith. As I have scarcely looked at a book for five years, I am rather hungry'.

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Disraeil : Alroy: a Romance

'Have you ever read Alroy by Disraeli?' [includes quotations from Alroy].

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

Thomas Lloyd Humbertstone : [article]

'This enclosed article is the third of yours that I have read. The first (about modelling) was about the most impersonal thing I ever came across. The second (spiders) was much better. And this third surprises me by its force & vitality.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet

William Wordsworth : 'Michael'

'Lately I have been reading Wordsworth with joy, for almost the first time. "Michael" quite overcame me by its perfect simplicity & power. I have read it about ten times lately.'

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

Thomas Lloyd Humberstone : Coventry

'I think the article on Sir John Gorst is able & shows a sufficient grasp of the subject; the tone of it also seems to me to be right . . . . As it stands, I think little of the chances of "Coventry" . . . People don?t want to know about their own country. If Coventry was in Italy, it would be different. As the article is not finished it would not be proper for me to criticise it finally. . .'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet

Thomas Lloyd Humberstone : article on Sir John Gorst

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: Sheet

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

'Just now I am reading nightly in bed Boswell?s "Life of Johnson". I suppose you know it by heart. Without doubt it is the most agreeable & diverting thing in non-imaginative literature in English.'

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

William Shakespeare : various

Quotes Shakespeare throughout work:V.1 p.55,p.62,p.86, p.105,p.126; V.2 p.55,p.89,p.199; V.3 p.176 eg. V.1. p.105 Letter XIII to Miss Reid, Fort William May 24 1773 '?He was like Brutus among conspirators, whom you used to admire in the play: "The rest did what they did in envy of the great Caesar/ He only, in general honest thought," ?'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] 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

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

'read a scene or two out of "As You Like It" - go upstairs to talk with Shelley - Read Ovid (54 lines only) Shelley finishes the 3d canto of Ariosto'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [Poems]

'After dinner look over W. W.[ordsworth]'s Poems'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'Construe ovid (117) & read a some cantos of Spenser - Shelley reads Seneca'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'Read Spenser (End of 9th canto) Shelley reads Seneca (143)'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Quene?]

'Read Spenser (End of 9th canto)'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Quene?]

'construe ovid - after dinner construe Ovid 100 lines - Finish 11 book of Spenser and read 2 Canto's of the third - Shelley reads seneca every day & all day (308)'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [The Faerie Queene?]

'After dinner read Spenser - read over the ovid to Jefferson & construe about ten lines more - read Spenser (10 Canto of 4 book)'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin 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

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

William Robertson : History of America

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin

James Thomson : Castle of Indolence, The

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin

Matthew Lewis : Tales of Terror

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin

William Wordsworth : [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 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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

James Thomson : Castle of Indolence, 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 - 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

William Shakespeare : [Plays]

[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 - 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 x 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 [sic] 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

James MacPherson : The Works of Ossian, the son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language by James MacPherson

[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

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

Mme de Genlis : Nouveaux contes moraux et nouvelles historiques

'We arrived wet to the skin - I read nouvelle nouvelles and write my story'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Ad?le et Th?odore; ou lettres sur l'?ducation

'I read Reveries and Adele & Teodore de Mad.me de Genlis & Shelley reads Pliny's letters'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Ad?le et Th?odore; ou lettres sur l'?ducation

'Finish the 1st vol of Adele - & write - after dinner write to Fanny and go up to Diodati where I read the life Mad. Deffand'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Ad?le et Th?odore; ou lettres sur l'?ducation

'Finish the 2nd vol. of Adele - write - read Curt. In the evening we go up to Diodati - Shelley finishes the Panegyric of Trajan and begins Tacitus'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Ad?le et Th?odore; ou lettres sur l'?ducation

'Read Curt. out in the boat with Shelley who reads Tacitus - translate and in the evening read Adele & Theodore'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

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

James Thomson : The seasons

Reader makes 4 references to the work V.1 pp 61,64; V.2 pp 4, 251. Eg. p. 61 'The sun shone on our social repast, but when we set out, Eolus did not perform the task Thomson assigns him in the opening of spring'; p.64 'I am reformed, and amended, but cannot fatigue myself or you with the description of this day; you will find it in Thomson ?Deceitful, vain, and void, passes the day.?'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

James Thomson : The Seasons

Letter to Mrs Macintosh September 9 1797 'The cheerfulness of our work-people, and the soft serenity of the air, during these tepid gleams that Thomson speaks of so feelingly, have almost made us this autumn ?Taste the rural life in all its joy,? and elegance'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee Macvicar] Print: Book

William Shenstone : [An ode to the late Duchess of Somerset]

Letter to Miss Reid May 24 1773 'O! how I wished for some one to share a luxury that wealth cannot purchase, and that thousands are not born to taste! "O! blind to truth, to virtue blind,/ Who slight the sweetly pensive mind,/ On whose birth the graces mild,/ Ands every Muse prophetic smil?d." ... ?There are the spirits born to know and prove,/ All nature?s charms immense, and heavens unbounded love."' [ie two separate quotations from the same verse]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

William Shenstone : [Elegy 15]

Letter to Miss Ourry June 4 1791 'Her sister, in whose arms she died, was immediately seized with the same disorder, and met her death with the same well-grounded heroism. "Surely to blissful realms those souls are flown That never flatter?d, censur?d, envied, strove" 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!'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : [possibly one of] Nouveaux contes moraux et nouvelles historiques

'Write and finish Walther - In the evening I go out in the boat with Shelley - and he afterwards goes up to Diodati - begin one of Madame de Genlis novels - Shelley finishes Tacitus'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

William Collins : Ode occasion'd by the death of Mr Thomson

Letter to Miss Ewing, May 1777, ' ? this other princely seat of the Athol family forms, at this moment, opposite my window ?But now the fairy vallies fade/Dun night has veil?d the solemn view;/Yet once again, dear parted maid/Meek Nature?s child, again adieu.' Letter to Miss Ewing May 1777

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Letter to MIss Ewing October 3, 1778 'I am glad you were so well entertained at the Fairley by my old acquaintance Clarissa, and your new acquaintance Mr. Monteith. I observe you frequently preferred the company of the former to the latter, and am pleased to find you so partial to my favourite heroine. Never, sure, were characters so well drawn, discriminated and supported as those in ?Clarissa?. ...' [comment continues]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

William Collins : Address to simplicity

Letter to Mrs Smith August 7 1784 'You and he too have this in common, that you both appear to most advantage on paper, where your diffidence does not stand in your way. He admires my application of Collin?s Address to Simplicity to you and says you really are, ?By nature taught/To breathe her genuine thought/ In language warmly lure and sweetly strong"'

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

James Macpherson : The poems of Ossian

Letter to Mrs Macintosh November 23 1800 'Nay, I find the relapse to calm sorrow, a relief from constant perturbation, ?Tha solas an thireadh le sith, Ach claoidhidh fad thuirs soil doruin,?*. As I cannot cure the evil habit of quotation, you see I have changed ground, and taken shelter in another language ? This whimsical parody is not unmeaning, for the original is stronger, and softer than the sense can be given in our language? [footnote]*This quotation from Ossian has been elegantly, and not unfaithfully, translated by James Macpherson. It runs literally thus??There is enjoyment in mourning with peace; yet long mourning wastes the children of calamity?'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Les Voeux t?m?raires; ou l'enthousiasme

'Finish "les voeux temeraires" - write and read Rienzi'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Nouveaux contes moraux et nouvelles historiques

'After dinner read some of Madme Genlis novels - Shelley reads Milton'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Nouveaux contes moraux et nouvelles historiques

'Read Curt. finish the "noveaux novelles" de Mad. de Genlis'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin 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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady

'finish the letters of Emile and read a part of Clarissa Harlowe'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady

'read Vol VI of Clarissa'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady

'read Vol VII of Clarissa - Shelley reads the letters of Emile'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'read the Rambler - S reads Montaigne's essays'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book, Serial / periodical, could have been original periodicals or later collected volumes

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Shelley reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'S. reads Don Quixote - afterwards read mem. of the Prin/sse of Ba/th aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Alphonsine; ou la tendresse maternelle

'Drawing lesson - read Alphonsine - shelley reads Don Q.[uixote] aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Drawing lesson - read Alphonsine - Shelley reads Don Q.[uixote] aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley 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

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

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

William Shakespeare : 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

William Wordsworth : The Excursion (excerpts)

'This modern fashion [in the study of poetry in schools] of treating noble thoughts, feelings, and principles, set forth in prose or verse, merely as the material for grammatical analysis, appears to my prejudiced mind to be a kind of intellectual vivisection. The life is destroyed in the act of discovering and distinguishing the elements of which its body os composed. A young friend of mine said to me that she had 'done' the story of Margaret, in the Excursion, with notes, for a correspondence class [...] All that she had retained from this 'doing' was, as far as I can gather, nothing but the fact that she had 'done' it. Feeling, admiration, there was none. The poetry had been a lesson to be "got through."'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

[William?] Jones : Commentarii

'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East - [including] .. "Jones's "Commentarii" ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Read Ides travels. S. reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : History of Sir Charles Grandison, The

'finish Bryan Perdue - write - not well in the evening begin Sir C. Grandison'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : History of Sir Charles Grandison, The

'read Sir C.[harles] G.[randison]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : History of Sir Charles Grandison, The

'read Grandison and Curt. Shelley reads and finishes Montainge [sic] to his great sorrow - he reads Lucian'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded

'begin Pamela. Shelley reads Locke and in the evening Paradise Lost aloud to me'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded

'Read Pamela - Little Babe not well - S. reads Locke & Pamela'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded

'Read Pamela - Little Babe not well - S. reads Locke & Pamela'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded

'Read Locke - Shelley reads Locke and Curt - & Pamela aloud in the evening'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley 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

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'read Locke and the Edinburgh review and two odes of Horace - S. reads Political Justice & Shakespeare and the 23rd Chap. of Gibbon'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Declaration of the proceedings of the victualling action

'By and by the Duke of York comes and we had a meeting; and among other things, I did read my declaration of the proceedings of the Victualling action this year, and desired his Royal Highness to give me the satisfaction of knowing whether his Royal Highness was pleased therewith. He told me he was...'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

William Shakespeare : Othello

'Up and to Deptford by water, reading "Othello, Moore of Venice", which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play; but having so lately read "The Adventures of five houres", it seems a mean thing.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : [manuscript on naval expenses]

'to Sir W. Coventry, and there read over my yesterday's work; being a collection of the perticulars of the excess in charge created by a war - with good content.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

[Samuel] Johnson : Lives [of the most eminent English poets]

'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] Johnson's "Lives" (I had read them before)...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book

[James] Boswell : Life of [Samuel] Johnson

'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] Boswell's "Life of Johnson; ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent

'Drawing Lesson - write - read Locke - & walk - Shelley reads Roscoe's life of Lorenzo de Medicis - Read Lucian and work in the evening. Read severy [for several)] odes of Horace'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent

'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

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent

'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: Mary Godwin Print: Book

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent

'read the life of Lorenzo - shelley [sic] reads the appendix'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book

William Roscoe : Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent

'read the life of Lorenzo - shelley [sic] reads the appendix'

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

James Shirley : Gamester, The

'read douglass [sic] & the Gamester'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Genlis : Les Chevaliers du cygne; ou la cour de Charlemagne

'read Comus. Knight of the swan - 1st Vol of Goldth citizen of the world'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley 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

[William] [Mason] : Caractacus

'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, ... "Caractacus" ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book

[Thomas] Jefferson : Virginia [Notes on state 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] ... Jefferson on Virginia ...'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book

[Samuel and John] Pepys : [Catalogue of his books]

'And so home and to supper, and then saw the Catalogue of my books which my brother hath wrote out, now perfectly Alphabetical; and so to bed.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [Catalogue of books]

'At noon dined well, and my brother and I to write over once more with my own hand my Catalogue of books, while he reads to me.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: John Pepys Manuscript: Sheet

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'Finish the memoirs - of Cumberland - read the Rambler'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Serial / periodical

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

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'and then did get Sir W. Batten, J. Mennes and W. Penn together, and read it [Pepys's report on the case of Mr Carcasse] over with all the many papers relating to the business; which they do wonder at, and the trouble that I have taken about it, and like the report, so as that they do unanimously resolve to sign it and stand by it.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'And by and by to Sir W. Batten, and there he and I and J. Mennes and W. Penn did read and sign with great liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'And by and by to Sir W. Batten, and there he and I and J. Mennes and W. Penn did read and sign with great liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Batten Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'And by and by to Sir W. Batten, and there he and I and J. Mennes and W. Penn did read and sign with great liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Penn Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'And by and by to Sir W. Batten, and there he and I and J. Mennes and W. Penn did read and sign with great liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir John Minnes Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [report on the case of Mr Carcasse]

'I presented our report about Carcasse to the Duke of York, and did afterwards read it, with that success that the Duke of York was for punishing him, not only with turning him out of the office but what other punishment he could'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Madeleine de Scuderi : Artamene, ou Le grand Cyrus

'and then home to my wife, who is not well with her cold, and sat and read [a] piece of "Grand Cyrus" in English by her'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [Poems]

'S. reads Wordsworths Poems aloud in the evening'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : [unknown]

'After tea S. reads Spencer aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : MacBeth

'In the evening S. finishes reading MacBeth'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'read Pliny and walk. S. reads a canto of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'S. reads Spencer aloud & finishes the first & begins the second book.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe 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

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'Read Apuleius. S. reads Spencer aloud'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'S. reads Hist. de la philosophie Moderne. and Spencer aloud'

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 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

William Shakespeare : Othello

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

M.G. Lewis : Anaconda, The

'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

James Beresford : Miseries of Human Life; or, the Groans of Samuel Sensitive and Timothy Testy. With a few supplementary sighs from Mrs. Testy

'Read and finish miseries of human life'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Souza : Eug?nie et Mathilde, ou les m?moires de la famille du Comte de Revel

'Read Mathilde et Eugenie'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Benjamin Thompson [trans.] : German Theatre

'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: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Benjamin Thompson (trans.) : German Theatre

'S. finishes reading his poem aloud. - read from the German theatre'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Benjamin Constant : Adolphe

'I feel that I can struggle on without Madame de Stael; but 'Adolphe' is an undiluted masterpiece.'

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

William Shakespeare : Much Ado about Nothing

'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

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

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

'In the evening read an Italian Translation of Pamela'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

'Shelley has finished the life of Tasso & reads Dante - read Pamela'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'begin Clarissa Harlowe in Italian - S. reads and finishes Dante's Purgatorio'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'S reads Hamlet'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Shepheardes Calendar, The

'S. reads aloud 6 eclogues from the Shepherds Calender[sic]'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Shepheardes Calendar, The

'S. reads a part of the Shepherds Calender [sic] aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Rostand : unknown

'There is nothing whatever of serious or permanent value in anything that Rostand ever wrote.'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett

Samuel Pepys : [letter to Sir Robert Brookes]

'all morning at the office finishing my letter to Sir Rob Brookes, which I did with great content; and yet at noon, when I came home to dinner, I read it over again after it was sealed and delivered to the messenger, and read it to my clerks who dined with me, and there I did resolve upon some alteration and caused it to be new writ'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Letter

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'It is one of the most extraordinary accidents in my life, and gives ground to think of Don Quixot's adventures how people may be surprized'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Memorandums and Conclusions of the Navy Board

'And with great joy I do find, looking over my Memorandum-books, which are now of great use to me and do fully reward me for all my care in keeping them, that I am not likely to be troubled for anything of that kind but what I shall either be able beforehand to prevent, or if discovered, be able to justify myself in.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel de Sorbiere : voyage into England

'and there got Balty to read to me out of Sorbiere's observations in his voyage into England; and then to bed.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Balthasar St Michael Print: Book

Madame de Scud?ri : Ibrahim, ou L'illustre Bassa

'And after dinner, she to read in the "Illustr. Bassa" the plot of yeterday's play, which is most exactly the same.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book

Madame de Scud?ri : Ibrahim, ou L'illustre Bassa

'And there I saw this new play my wife saw yesterday; and do not like it, it being very smutty, and nothing so good as "The Maiden Queen" or "The Indian Imperour", of his making, that I was troubled at it; and my wife tells me is wholly (which he confesses a little in the epilogue) taken out of the "Illustr. Bassa".'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Pepys Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : [Report]

'and then up about 7 and to White-hall, where read over my report to Lord Arlington and Berkely and then afterward at the Council Board, with great good liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [Report]

'and then up about 7 and to White-hall, where read over my report to Lord Arlington and Berkely and then afterward at the Council Board, with great good liking'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [letter]

'Walked to St James and Pell Mell, and read over with Sir W. Coventry my long letter to the Duke of York and what the Duke of York hath from mine wrote to the board; wherein he is mightily pleased, and I perceive to put great value upon me.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Pepys : [letter]

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Coventry Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Pepys : [paper on naval business]

'and there to Mr Wren at his chamber at White-hall ... And there he and I did read over my paper that I have with so much labour drawn up about the several answers of the Officers of this office to the Duke of York's reflections, and did debate a little what advice to give the Duke of York when he comes to town upon it.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [paper on naval business]

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Wren Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [note]

'Up, and I did, by a little note which I flung to Deb, advise her that I did continue to deny that ever I kissed her, and so she might govern herself ... The girl read, and as I bid her, returned me the note, flinging it to me in passing by.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Deborah Willet Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Pepys : [letter with corrections by Matthew Wren]

'This evening comes Mr Billup to me to read over Mr Wren's alterations of my draft of a letter for the Duke of York to sign, to the board; which I like mighty well, they being not considerable, only in mollifying some hard terms which I had thought fit to put in.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Manuscript: Letter

Clement Edmonds : 'Life' prefaced to 'The commentaries of C. Julius Caesar'

'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

Samuel Pepys : [work on naval history]

'Thence home; and after dinner, by water with Tom down to Greenwich, he reading to me all the way, coming and going, my collections out of the Duke of York's old manuscript of the Navy, which I have bound up and doth please me mightily.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [work on naval history]

'and home, where I made my boy to finish the reading of my manuscript; and so to supper and to bed.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [work on naval history]

'and so with W. Hewer to the Cock, and there he and I dined alone with great content, he reading to me, for my memory sake, my late collections of the history of the Navy, that I might represent the same by and by to the Duke of York'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: William Hewer Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : [defence of the existing constitution of the Navy Board]

'and there, by and by being called in, Mr Williamson did read over our paper, which was in a letter to the Duke of York, bound up in a book with the Duke of York's book of Instructions. He read it well; and after read we were bid to withdraw, nothing being at all said to it.'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Manuscript: 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

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

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

'Read 42nd Canto - Livy - Anacharsis. Horace - and Shakespears Coriolanus - S. translates the Symposium & reads Philaster'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

'Wednesday Aug. 17th. [...] We [Claire Clairmont, P. B. Shelley, and Mary Godwin] fled away [from dirty hotel at village of Mort] & climbed some wild rocks -- & sat there reading till the sun laid down to rest -- I read As you like it [&] found the wild & romantic touches of this Play very accordant with the scene befor[e] me & my feeling'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'Saturday August 27th. Reach Lucerne about half after twelve [p.m.] -- Go to the Cheval. Read King Richard III. & King Lear. Quite Horrified -- [I] can't describe my feelings for [th]e moment -- when Cornwall tears [ou]t the eyes of the Duke of Gloster -- This Play is the most melancholy & produces almost stupendous despair on the reader -- Such refinement in wickedness & cruelty'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'Saturday August 27th. Reach Lucerne about half after twelve -- Go to the Cheval. Read King Richard III. & King Lear. Quite Horrified -- [I] can't describe my feelings for [th]e moment -- when Cornwall tears [ou]t the eyes of the Duke of Gloster -- This Play is the most melancholy & produces almost stupendous despair on the reader -- Such refinement in wickedness & cruelty'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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: '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

William Shakespeare : King Lear

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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

William Wordsworth : The Excursion, Being a Portion of the Recluse, a Poem

'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.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

'Friday Sept. 16th. Rise at nine -- Breakfast -- Read Rasselas -- & De l'origine de l'inegalite [d]es Hommes'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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

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

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'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

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Sunday Sept. 25th. [...] Read Smellie Philosophy [o]f Natural History.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Monday Sept. 26th. Read the Empire of the Nairs & Smellie.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Tuesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie. Pack up all morning. Remove about five o'clock to Pancrass. Read Smellie in the Evening.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Tuesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie. Pack up all morning. Remove about five o'clock to Pancrass. Read Smellie in the Evening.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Wednesday Sept. 27th. Read Smellie.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Smellie : The Philosophy of Natural History

'Wednesday Sept. 29th. [...] Read Smellie.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'The Mad Mother'

''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.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'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

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'Monday Nov. 7th. Rise at nine -- Work. Read Political Justice -- Mary [Wollstonecraft Godwin] dines at one & goes to Shelley. Read King Richard the Third -- Dine by myself at four. Mary returns at six -- Talk with her. & read some miscellaneous poetry.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady

'Thursday April 16. Finish the Depit Amoureux read Les precieuses ridicules. Also part of Clarissa Harlowe.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady

'Friday April 17th. Read Clarissa Harlowe and Amphitryon of Moliere.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'Saturday April 18. [...] Shelley reads aloud Hamlet. Read Lear.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'Saturday April 18. [...] Shelley reads aloud Hamlet. Read Lear.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady

'Wednesday April 22. [...] Read Clarissa Harlowe.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

Mademoiselle de Montpensier : Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, fille de M. Gaston d'Orleans, frere de Louis XIII

'Thursday March 11th [...] Read Vie de Mademoiselle de Montpensiers ecrite par elle meme.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Wordsworth : unknown

'Tuesday March 16th. Go in the Morning to the Gardens of the Villa Borghese -- sit on the steps of the temple of Esculapius and read Wordsworth'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'Thursday Jany. 20th. [...] Work all day. S. reads Henry 4th to us.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley 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

Adam Smith : Treatise on the Imitative Arts

'Thursday March 16th. [...] Read the Life of Adam Smith [makes notes on this] [...] In Smith's Treatise concerning the Imitative Arts I find the following: "The Minuet, where the Lady passes & repasses the Gentleman, then gives him one hand and then another, and at last both, is supposed to be a[...] Moorish dance emblematic of the passion of love." So little did our prudish grandmother's [sic] know what they were about.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

'Tuesday May 23rd. [...] Read Boswell's Life of Johnson.' [records of reading this text also appear in entries for 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 May 1820]

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

William Nicholson : An Introduction to Natural Philosophy

'Wednesday June 28th. [...] Begin Nicholson's Natural Philosophy -- Read Saggio Istorico della rivoluzione di Napoli [sic] [makes notes on this]'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'S. reads Richard III in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry VIII

'S. reads Theocritus - & Henry VIII aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry VIII

'S. reads Theocritus and Virgil's Georgics - after tea he reads aloud and finishes the play of Henry VIII'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Troilus and Cressida

'Read 12 Canto of Tasso & two acts of Troilus and Cressida'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Troilus and Cressida

'Finish Troilus and Cressida - read 3 books of Pope's Homer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Fowre Hymnes

'Read Hymns - Epithalamion &c of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Epithalamion

'Read Hymns - Epithalamion &c of Spencer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Measure for Measure

'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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady

'Sunday Sept. 3rd. [...] Read Clarissa Harlowe.' [further readings of this text recorded in journal entries for 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13 September 1820; 'Finish Clarissa Harlowe' recorded in entry for 14 September].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

James Touchet, Lord Audley, third earl of Castlehaven : The Memoir's [sic] of James Lord Audley Earl of Castlehaven, His Engagements and Carriage in the Wars of Ireland, from the Year 1642 to the Year 1651

''Sunday Sept. 17th. [...] Begin Earl of Castlehaven's Memoirs.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont 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

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'Left Black's and fell in with Wm Lotherington and Perrot this was about eleven o clock they came home with me, and we drank Brandy and Water and read Falstaff till one o clock or past.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau Print: Book

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population

'read Saul - S. reads Malthus.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population

'Read Livy - Alfieri's Agide - S. reads Malthus'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'finish the trajedies of Alfieri - Walk out with S. He reads Malthus & Cymbeline aloud in the evening'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Tempest, The

'Read Livy - The Tempest & two gentlemen of Verona - S finishes Ma[l]thus - & reads Cymbeline aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Two Gentlemen of Verona

'Read Livy - The Tempest & two gentlemen of Verona - S finishes Ma[l]thus - & reads Cymbeline aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population, An

'Read Livy - The Tempest & two gentlemen of Verona - S finishes Ma[l]thus - & reads Cymbeline aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'Read Livy - The Tempest & two gentlemen of Verona - S finishes Ma[l]thus - & reads Cymbeline aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Winter's Tale

'Read Vita di Alfieri & Livy - S. reads Winter's tale aloud to me'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Winter's Tale

'Read Vita di Alfieri - half the 9th book of Virgil - S reads Winters tale aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Timon of Athens

'Finish Vita di Tasso - Read Timon of Athens - work - S finishes the Winter's Tale'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Timon of Athens

'Read Timon of Athens'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : All's Well That Ends Well

'Arrive at Venise at 2 o'clock - Read alls well that ends well'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Souza : Adele de Senage, ou lettres de Lord Sydenham

'Read Livy - Adele de Senange - S reads Livy'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Stael : Corinne

'Read Corinne and Livy - S reads Livy'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Stael : Corinne

'Read Corinne & Livy - S reads Corinne'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Stael : Corinne

'Finish Corinne & 7th Book of Livy - S reads Corinne'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

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

Madame Fauques de Vaucluse : The Vizirs; or, the Enchanted Labyrinth. An oriental tale

'Read Dante - History of 2 Viziers - 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

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'Read Hamlet'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

'Read Romeo & Juliet - S. reads the Hipolitus of Euripides'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'Read King Lear'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

'Read Othello'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'Read Julius Caesar'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King John

'Read King John - & Livy'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Merry Wives of Windsor, The

'Read Livy - & the merry Wives of Windsor'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [History Plays]

'Read Metastasio - S. reads the Hist. P.[lay]s of Shakespeare'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley 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

Miguel de Cervantes : Los rabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, historia septentrional

'Read Livy - Persiles & Sigismunda'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

'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

William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

'Sunday Dec 2nd. [...] Read Julius Caesar of Shakespeare.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'Sunday Dec. 30th. [...] Read Cymbeline Titus Andronicus and 1st. and 2nd. part of Henry IV.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Titus Andronicus

'Sunday Dec. 30th. [...] Read Cymbeline Titus Andronicus and 1st. and 2nd. part of Henry IV.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV part I

'Sunday Dec. 30th. [...] Read Cymbeline Titus Andronicus and 1st. and 2nd. part of Henry IV.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV part II

'Sunday Dec. 30th. [...] Read Cymbeline Titus Andronicus and 1st. and 2nd. part of Henry IV.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'Thursday Jany. 17th. [...] Read King Lear.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'Sunday March 3rd. [...] Read Hamlet.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

'Sunday March 10th. [...] Read Romeo and Juliet.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

King James I of Scotland : The King's Quair

In journal entry for Wednesday 25 May, Claire Clairmont transcribes stanzas 28 and 29 from Canto II of The King's Quair, by James I of Scotland.

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.'

Unknown

Century: 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].'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont

Chretien-Hermann Gambs : Lecture on Modern History

'Friday [...] August 4th. [...] Read Life of Gothe [sic], Lecture on Modern History by M. Gambs.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont

William Wordsworth : 'Simon Lee'

'Sunday Nov. [...] 27th. [...] Mr. Armfeld & the little Bielfeld spent the Evening -- we read Wordsworth's Ballad of Simon Lee & then we talked.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book

William Robertson : The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. with a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century

'Sunday [...] Dec. 4th. [...] After dinner [attended by several guests] [...] Mr. Sommer came in in [...] his usual wild hurried manner [...] consented to play a Sonata of Beethoven's [...] Then after inveighing against everything in Moscow, pavement, lights, houses & the women he caught up his hat and departed. to our great relief. They played at the Cat & the Mouse and I read Robertson.' [also mentions reading Robertson earlier in same entry, and in entries for 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15,16, 23, 25, 27 December 1825; and 2, 10, 11 January 1826].

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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Manuscript: Letter

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

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

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

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'Do you remember the knocking in Macbeth? ...The porter is a man I have a great respect for. He had a great command of language. All that he says, curiously enough, my mother left out when she read Macbeth to me ... I remember the day my mother read Macbeth to me.'

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

William Wordsworth : Peter Bell: a tale in verse

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Tempest

'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

William Shakespeare : Othello

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

Madame de Stael : Considerations sur les principaux evenemens de la Revolution francaise

'Read Horace - Memoires du Comte Grammont - S. writes his letter concerning Carlile - & reads Mme de Staels account of the Revolution - & Clarendon aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley 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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady

[Mary Shelley's Reading List of her reading in 1819. All are mentioned in journal entries so are not given separate entries here] '2 Vols of Montaigne Forsyths tour Romans de la Chevalerie Vision de Quivedo Clarissa Harlowe The Spectator The Bible as far as the Psalms in latin Twenty books of Livy - making thirty with the ten of last year Lucan's Pharsalia 3 books of Horace Gussman d'Afarache Memoires du Compte de Grammont Lettres de Madme Sevigne'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : 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

William Shakespeare : Tempest, The

'Shelley reads the Tempest alout [sic] - & the Bible & Sophocles to himself'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Tempest, The

'Finish the book of Proverbs. S. reads the Bible & Sophocles - Finishes the Tempest aloud to me.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part I

'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: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King John

'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: Percy Bysshe 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

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

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'S. reads Henry IV aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

'S. reads Henry V'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry VI

'S. reads Henry VI aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry VI

'Read the Utopia - Write - S reads Henry VI aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes : [unknown]

'S. reads Hobbes. Ezechiel aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes : Humane Nature

'S. reads Hobbes'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes : Leviathan

'Translate Sxxxxxa [Spinoza] with Shelley - Read Lettres Cabalistiques - S. finishes the Leviathan of Hobbes. reads the Bible aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe 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

Edmund Spenser : 'Virgil's Gnat'

'S. reads to me Spencer's Virgil's Gnat'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe 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

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D.

'Read Boswell's life of Johnson'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D.

'Read Livy - finish Life of Johnson'

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

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

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

James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson

Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 10 July 1832: 'Mr Croker has lately published an edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. I have been looking over it, and do not think his additions & notes of much value. But he is impartial, -- which is a wonderful merit in an editor.'

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

August Wilhelm von Schlegel : Uber dramatische Kunst und Literatur (extracts)

Elizabeth Barrett to Lady Margaret Cocks, 31 December 1832: 'I have had my hands & head full of a book called the Greek Theatre, composed in part of extracts, & edited by a Cambridge Student [...] In the body of the work, are extracts from Schlegel: so full of poetical & classical enthusiasm, that I should like to know something of the [italics]German[end italics] Schlegel!'

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

Thomas Chalmers : On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man

Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, c.September 1835: 'I have been reading the Bridgewater treatises, -- and am now trying to understand Prout upon chemistry [...] Chalmers's treatise is, as to eloquence, surpassingly beautiful: as to matter, I could not walk with him all the way -- altho' I longed to do it, for he walked on flowers, & under shade'.

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

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

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

Wiliam Robertson : History of America

'Finish Muratori - Greek - Travels of Rolando - S. reads Robertson's America - begins Bocaccio [sic] aloud'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

William Robertson : History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V, with a view of the progress of society in Europe from the subversion of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the sixteenth century

'S. reads the history of Charles 5th by Robertson'

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

William Shakespeare : Troilus and Cressida

'Troilus & Cressid [sic] in the evening'

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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa Harlowe; or, The History of a Young Lady

'I performed one Herculean task, having nearly finished Clarissa Harlowe, the most glorious novel ever written, & I advise you begin it as soon as you can.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Darwin Print: Book

Thomas Erskine : Armata: a fragment

'read Armata - read Homer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Madame de Stael : Corinne

'read Corinne'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Don Quixote & Calderon'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Erskine : Armata: a fragment

[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

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe 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

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

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

Edmund Spenser : 'Hymn of Heavenly Beautie'

'Till lately I have never read Spenser, and therefore was not personally acquainted with his beauties. Neither do I mean to say now that I have read his "Fairie Queen"; but having accidentally met with an extract from his "Hymn of Heavenly Love", a long poem, I went to Papa's study and read the whole poem, which is most exquisitely beautiful, and is perhaps equal to anything Milton ever wrote. [...] I was so much delighted with it that I read another, his "Hymne of Heavenly Beautie", Which in point of poetic excellence perhaps exceeds the other. [...] Papa's copy of his poems is a very old edition, prinnted in the time of Queen Elizabeth, to whom it is dedicated. The illuminations are very curious, and the engravings most laughable; the print is small, and the old words make it rather difficult to read.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Shore Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : 'Mother Hubbard's Tale'

'This evening I read Spenser's poem called 'Mother Hubbard's Tale', a very long one. It is evidently a satire on the court and clergy, and a very bitter one too.' [Editors note: 'Then follow three pages of extracts from the above named poem, very accurately done'].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Shore 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

Salomon Stricker : Du langage et de musique

'Read Feb 1899' on flyleaf. Some marginalia in English and French on the following pages: 54, 75, 77, 110, 163.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee Print: Book

William Bateson : Problems of Genetics

Considerable textual marginalia in English throughout.

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

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

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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady

'By the way, I am in the train of reading the "History of Clarissa", who affords a notable example that fear is not the effectual mode. Pray did you ever go through that work? There is, indeed, tautology of sense - the same thing said ten thousand times over. I should be glad to hear your thoughts of that work.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady

'I am doubtful whether the opinion of the world is so much in favour of Richardson's talents as formerly. It appears to me that there is not one character in the whole work that has any natural train in it, or any marks of distinction, which it required any considerable talents to depict....' [extensive criticism of "Clarissa" follows]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir William Elford Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'I must own that Virgil's "Envy" and Spenser's "Cave of Error" are my aversion, as well as some other most exquisitely disgusting allegories. Our own Milton, I think, always keeps clear of this fault, and I cannot believe, in spite of Mr. Maturin, and Mr. Wilson, and Lord Byron, that it is true taste which tolerates it.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eleanor Anne Porden 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

William Shakespeare : King Lear

'S. begins King Lear in the evening.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book

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

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population, An

'read Malthus'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book

Thomas Malthus : Essay on the Principle of Population, An

'read & finish Malthus - Begin the Answer'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madame de Stael : Memoires sur la vie privee de mon pere, par Madame la Baronne de Stael Holstein, suivis des Melanges de M. Necker

'Unwell - read Madme de Stael's vie privee de Necker'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley 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

Thomas J. Serle : Joan of Arc

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 8 December 1841: 'I have not read Self formation, -- & [italics]have[end italics] read "Gaston de Blondeville" [...] And I have been reading your Mr Serle's Joan of Arc -- confessing with you the talent of the book, while I groaned a little under the heaviness [...] Joan is not very interesting -- true & beautiful as is the aspect she wears. She is seen as in a picture -- attitude, countenance -- but we dont feel her heart beat -- we know nothing of her inward life.'

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

Thomas Westwood : Note to Elizabeth Barrett

Elizabeth Barrett to Thomas Westwood, 7 January 1842: 'Miss Barrett -- inferring Mr Westwood from the handwriting, -- begs his acceptance of the unworthy little book [Barret's An Essay on Mind] he does her the honour of desiring to see [...] Will he receive at the same moment, the expression of the touched & gratified feelings with which Miss Barrett read what he wrote on the subject of her later volumes [...] she is thankful for what he said so kindly in his note to her'.

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

Thomas Westwood : Poems

Elizabeth Barrett to Thomas Westwood, 5 February 1842: 'I [italics]was[end italics] and [italics]am[end italics] very grateful to you for the gift of your poems [...] my pencil has marked my favourites. I like, among others, that song with the pretty wild measure, about the summer, and the song to spring about the "bright-vein'd flowers"'.

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

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

Madame de Genlis : Memoires inedits de madame la comtesse de Genlis

'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

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson

'I have read Boswell I am sure ten times - & hope to read it many more it is the most amusing book in the world, besides that I do love the kind hearted wise & Gentle Bear - & think him as loveable a [Man] friend as a profound philosopher' [letter to John Murray, who had just published a new edition of Boswell's Life Of Johnson that Mary was keen to possess]

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

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

Samuel Richardson : Correspondence

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 24 March 1842: 'Richardson's correspondence has charmed me -- "charming" being the right word, since I verily & indeed believed myself wrapt up close in the domestic brocades of the Harlowe family, all the time I spent in reading it. His own letters are letters out of his romances to the very crossing of the t[']s [...] Lady Bradleigh [sic] is delightful -- -- I don't wonder that he tired himself with pacing up & down Hyde Park in his desire to catch a glimpse of her! [...] I read that volume with quite a romance-palpitation. Thank you, thank you for telling me of the book'.

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

William Wordsworth : Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years; Including The Borderers, a Tragedy

Elizabeth Barrett to John Kenyon, 13 April 1842: 'I send you back the [italics]two[end italics] books with a great many thanks. 'The Tragedy will be considered probably "naught" as a whole, but of considerable entity of beauty in its detached parts. It appears to [italics]me[end italics] that there are even fine dramatic touches in it although it is not a fine tragedy [...] For the rest -- there is much which is beautiful & powerful -- only you have [end italics]to dig for it[end italics] -- Do read the sonnets to the painter .. & the next palinodia sonnet -- & the one beginning "A Poet" -- & that composed on May morning 1838'.

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

William Wordsworth : Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years; Including The Borderers, a Tragedy

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 April 1842: 'Dear Mr Kenyon lent me Wordsworth's new volume two days ago -- & I have read the last line & end gratefully to the poet. The tragedy [italics]fails[end italics] [...] yet has more dramatic feature occasionally than I had expected to find [...] Among the other poems there are some four or five sonnets which are supremely excellent [makes other criticisms]'.

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

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

Comtesse de Genlis : Adele et Theodore, ou Lettres sur l'Education

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 December 1842: 'I like Madme de Genlis in many of her writings [...] Do you know [...] the story of the Duchesse de C. in the cavern, extended into three volumes? Would you like to know it, if you do not already? I have it here. It belongs to me. And it always seems to me the very best, most vivid & most interesting of its author's various romances, & well worth reading once or twice or thrice.'

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

James Macpherson (as 'Ossian') : 'Carthon'

Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 5 January 1843: 'It is many years since I looked at Ossian; & I never did much delight in him as that fact proves. Since your letter came I have taken him up again -- & have just finished 'Carthon' -- There are beautiful passages in it [...] But [...] nothing is articulate -- nothing [italics]individual[end italics], nothing various.'

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

James Macpherson (as 'Ossian') : Ossian poems

Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, 10 January 1843: 'I have read only a small part of Ossian [...] I have been reading a good deal of Dr Blair's Dissertation upon Ossian. The Miss Smiths can bear witness, that before I read it, I made several of the remarks which I afterwards found in Blair.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Stuart Boyd Print: Book

James Macpherson (as 'translator' of Ossian) : Poems of Darthula

Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, in hand of an amanuensis, letter postmarked 19 January 1843: 'Since I last wrote to you, the Poems of Darthula has been read to me again. It appears to me, a thing very extraordannary [sic], that a mind like yours, should not take grate [sic] delight in such Poetry as that of Ossian.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Stuart Boyd Print: Book

William Shakespeare : unknown

Benjamin Robert Haydon, in his Autobiography, mentions 'Liz', 'An attractive girl on the second floor of a house full of young men ... [who] attached herself to the party, made tea for them, marketed with them, carved for them, went to the lay with them, read Shakespeare with them,' going on to remark, 'Her position was anomalous, but I firmly believe it was innocent ... She was a girl with a man's mind ... as interesting a girl as you would wish to see'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Liz Print: Book

James Macpherson (as 'translator' of Ossian) : The Death of Cuchullin

Hugh Stuart Boyd to Elizabeth Barrett, in hand of amanuensis, letter postmarked 3 March 1843: 'Since I last wrote to you expressly on the Poems of Ossian; I have read another, called, The death of Cuthullin [sic]. I found, that it contained the idea you admired so much, about the darkened half of the moon, behind its growing light [...] Harriet Holmes who read it to me, thought it finer than the other [?Carric-thura]. I myself am doubtfull [sic] about it.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Holmes 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

William Wordsworth : letter to Crabbe Robinson

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 March 1843: 'Mr Kenyon came to see me yesterday [...] and he brought & read to me a letter from Mr Wordsworth to Mr Crabbe Robinson speaking with great feeling of the release of the poor Laureate [i.e. the death of Robert Southey]'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Kenyon Manuscript: Letter

James Macpherson (as 'translator' of Ossian) : The Death of Cuchullin

Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 31 March 1843: 'I feel guilty before you, since your last letter has remained too long unanswered [...] I thought it necessary to read "Cuthullin" steadily through as a preliminary to replying to your remarks upon it. This has been achieved at last [...] I admit the great beauty of certain things in the poem [...] although I preserve my opinion upon the general monotony & defective individuality'.

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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'She often talked to us of her studies as a girl; how she used not only to devour novels and read Sir Charles Grandison every winter, but how she also taught herself a little French, learned by heart long passsages from the great poets, sometimes read history, and especially delighted in Bayley's Dictionary, with its long meanings and rules for pronunciation'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'My chief acquaintance with the writers of the eighteenth century is derived from reading to Aunt Lyddy papers in the "Spectator" and "The Rambler", Mason's plays, Addison's "Cato" etc. This we were often called upon to do when we were invited to dine with Aunt Clarke'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Serial / periodical, possibly bound as a book

William Wordsworth : Grace Darling

Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 18 May 1843: '[William Wordsworth] had the kindness to send me the poem upon Grace Darling when it first appeared: and with a curious mixture of feelings [...] I yet read it with so much pain from the nature of the subject, that my judgement was scarcely free to consider the poetry [...] '[italics]But[end italics] ... I do confess to you my dear friend, that I suspect, .. through the mist of my sensations, .. the poem in question to be very inferior to his former poems'.

Unknown

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

William Russell : History of Modern Europe

'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was wofully 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'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book

William Robertson : History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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 book which I knew so well by name'.

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

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'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

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

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Stories on the Lord's Prayer

'I read both the few chapters of the intended tract, and the beginning of "Amy Herbert" to my sisters, and they liked them'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Amy Herbert

'I read both the few chapters of the intended tract, and the beginning of "Amy Herbert" to my sisters, and they liked them'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Michael Scott : Tom Cringle's Log

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 [...] His noise made my head ache, & his loud laughing made me grave [...] I tried the Log & cdnt quite get thro' it. I shrink too from these maritime books now, for other reasons.'

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

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Stories on the Lord's Prayer

'I was reading the little book aloud to my mother one evening when he was in the room, and not being well was lying on the sofa half asleep, as I thought; but he listened, and I think was interested, for he asked me what I was reading. I forget exactly what answer I made, but it certainly was not that I was reading anything of my own, and so I lost the opportunity of giving him pleasure'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell 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

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Earl's Daughter, The

'"The Earl's Daughter" was also begun before my mother's death, and I read part of it to her, but she saw from the beginning that it was likely to be sad, and I think it rather oppressed her. "Margaret Percival" I read to her entirely, and also a portion of "Laneton Parsonage", and I remember being obliged to reassure her that Alice Lennox (in the latter tale) when taken ill would not die, she took such a vivid interest in the story - which was only completed after her death'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Margaret Percival

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Laneton parsonage

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Manuscript: Unknown

Elizabeth Missing Sewell : Katherine Ashton

'Colonel Forbes has not in appearance, position and surroundings the least resemblance to his prototype; yet that the character is in the main true was shown to me strangely by the fact that the gentleman who gave me the idea of it came to me after he had read "Katherine Ashton" and owned that Colonel Forbes resembled himself, though no one else ever suggested the likeness.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon. 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

William Wordsworth : epitaph for Robert Southey

Thomas Westwood to Elizabeth Barrett, 27 December 1843: 'On my return from a long, weary walk through mud & mist, yesterday morning, my eyes were gladdened by the sight of your letter [...] Thank you for those lines of Wordsworth's [epitaph for Robert Southey, transcribed by Barrett in her letter, of 26 December 1843]'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical

Thomas Westwood : Beads from a Rosary

Elizabeth Barrett to Thomas Westwood, 11 January 1844: 'I have [...] read your volume through [...] I have several favourite poems -- the "Invocation" [...] & "Spring" [...] & the "Mill-song," & the Wind, & the "Parlour Fire," .. but my favourite in the whole book, I think, must be confessed to be the "Birth song of the Flowers."'

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

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

Benjamin Disraeli : Coningsby: or, The New Generation

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 20 September 1844: 'I have just read Coningsby. It is very able, & yet scarcely efficient [...] It has no story, & not a great deal of character; and is powerful as an exponent of the Young England political views, without being specific. Still, a master-mind lives in the book, & the reader feels it everywhere.'

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

Madame d'Abrantes : romances

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 30 November 1844: 'I have read some of the romances of Madme d'Abrantes [...] Yes -- she is delightful.'

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

Comte Emmanuel Dieudonne de Las Cases : Memorial de Sainte Helene

'Besides the highland impediment we have had daily visitors for a whole fortnight so I have got nothing read except Turnadot and Napoleon's memoirs - I assure you I have made a violent effort to keep my temper-'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'I read Spenser these some mornings, while eating my breakfast. He is a dainty little fellow, as ever you saw: I propose that you and he shall be closely acquainted by and by.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book

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

[Madame] de Genlis : Alphonsine, ou la tendresse maternelle

'Miss James has lent me, and I have been reading Alphonsine - that is the two first volumes - and it has completely bewitched me - I was such an old Ass as to sit up last night till three o'clock, reading - and then snuffed out my candle, and went to bed by daylight., The perfect originality of the plan upon which the story is founded, enchants me - and difficult as such an idea was to developpe, Mde de Genlis I think has done justice to her own design - a felicity many authors fail in attaining. - Oh - (But now another day has passed, and I have finished the three volumes of Alphonsine - and the [underlined] last [end underlining] disgraces the two first - Such a pack of higgledy piggledy stuff, without interest, finish, or any attempt at probability, I never read - Whip the woman!-'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Dictionary of the English Language, A

'[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

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'I have been with a nice little party of College friends, to see King John, and for a week after, I could do nothing but read Shakespear. Mrs Siddons was Magnificent-'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney 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]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Sonnet on the Projected Kendal and Winandermere Railway'

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

Richard Monckton Milnes : 'Projected Railways in Westmoreland. An Answer to Mr Wordsworth's Late Sonnet'

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

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

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

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

Philippe-Paul, comte de Segur : Histoire de Napoleon et de la grande armee, pendant l'annee 1812

'Of course you have read Segur, & Pepys, and with the latter are perhaps "mightily" weary now & then, but on the whole amused - There is a interesting History of the Tower of London lately published, which read when you can, for its historical anecdotes - and also (if you like Tours) read John Russel's Tour in Germany in 1820, 21, 22.'

William Wordsworth : The Prelude

Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 18 September 1936: 'The Prelude. Have you read it lately? Do you know, it's so good, so succulent, so suggestive, that I have to hoard it, as a child keeps a crumb of cake? And then people say he's dull!'

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.'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Maynard Keynes

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

William Robertson : History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V

'You talk of reading "a very old book": Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides. Why that's a [underlined] chickn [sic, underlined] compared to my present reading. I am reduced to a perusal of my own little library, and am solacing myself with Plutarch's Lives, and Robertson's History of Charles V. and vary my sport occasionally with an Historical Play of Shakespear, or a good Sunday Book.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [History plays]

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

James Boswell : Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Grosvenor Print: Book

Thomas ? Kempis : The Imitation of Christ

'I am now off to bed after reading a chapter of S. Thomas ? Kempis. I think half-an-hour's warping of the inner man daily is greatly conducive to holiness.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [plays]

'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

William Robertson : History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book

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

William Shakespeare : unknown

2 March 1918: '[On 19 February] we went to Asheham [...] I saw no-one; for 5 days I wasn't in a state for reading [due to influenza]; but I did finally read Morley & other books; but reading when done to kill time has a kind of drudgy look in it [...] One day I sat in the garden reading Shakespeare; I remember the ecstacy'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Lines Written in Early Spring, 1798'

5 April 1918: 'Off we went to Asheham on Thursday [21 March] [...] my memory is most centred upon an afternoon reading in the garden. I happened to read Wordsworth; the poem which ends "what man has made of man".'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

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

William Michael Rossetti : Memoir of Christina Rossetti

Editor's note reads 'V[irginia] W[oolf] must have been reading William Michael Rossetti's 1904 edition of The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, to which he added a "compendious Memoir of her uneventful and rather secluded life."' See Additional Comments.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Robertson : Charles V

'For the last ten days I have been getting on again in good style. I have finished Charles and am in the second volume of the History of America. At this rate I calculate on getting through with all the books which you recommend to me in about twenty years.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book

James Boswell : Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

' - I read Boswell's tour in the Hebrides and speculate agreeably on the probable difference between Boswell's conception of the Hebrides and yours - '

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Book

William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream.

'As soon as I have done, I shall begin my ?Pastoral Drama? business; I have so many nice things to say about "Midsummer Night?s Dream"[?]'

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

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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

Tuesday 10 August 1920: 'Reading Don Q. still -- I confess rather sinking in the sand -- rather soft going [...] but he has the loose, far scattered vitality of the great books, which keeps me going'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf 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

William Shakespeare : [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 Morris : [unknown]

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book

William Butler Yeats : [unknown]

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : Books on the Table

Wednesday 10 August 1921: 'I may well ask, what is truth? And I cant ask it in my natural tones, since my lips are wet with Edmund Gosse. How often have I said that I would never read anyone before beginning to write? The book came at breakfast, & I fell. He is one of the respectables [...] But how low in tone it all is -- purred out by the firesides of Dowagers. That is not quite true, seeing that he has some sturdiness, some independence, & some love of letters. The peculiar combination of suavity, gravity, malignity, & common sense always repels me.'

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

William Shakespeare : Othello

Tuesday 24 April 1928: 'I was reading Othello last night, & was impressed by the volley & volume & tumble of his words: too many I should say, were I reviewing for the Times [goes on to comment further on Shakespeare] [...] I've read only French for 4 weeks.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

James Jeans : unknown

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

James Boswell : A Life of Samuel Johnson

'Fortunately Peter had lots of reading matter and he loaned me "Doctor Johnson".'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book

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

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

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

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

'I sat in my rickety camp chair which had been artfully and ingeniously repaired by [Sherpa] Wangdi to prevent it falling to pieces, and read Shakespeare's sonnets.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Frank Smythe Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Coningsby

25 December 1931: 'After writing the last page, Nov. 16th, I could not go on writing without a perpetual headache; & so took a month lying down; have not written a line; have read Faust, Coningsby &c.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

Max Eastman : The Literary Mind: Its Place in an Age of Science

Sunday 8 May 1932: 'I've scarcely read [on holiday in Greece] [...] only Roger's Eastman, & Wells, & Murry.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

Naomi Mitchison : Review of W. H. Auden, The Orators

Thursday 2 June 1932: 'Lord David [Cecil]'s party last night. Half across London [...] Edwardes Sq[a]re very large leafy silent Georgian refined: so too no. 41 [...] Talk about Auden & Naomi Mitchison: her review of Auden read aloud'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Serial / periodical

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

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

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

E.M. Forster : A Passage to India

'Spender cut his tobacco allowance down to one pipeful a day in order to take with him Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Forster's "A Passage to India". These were a great boon to us in our few bouts of bad weather,though Tilman and I felt ourselves morally obliged to pay with tobacco for the luxury of reading.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of Shaksgam Expedition Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part 1

Monday 26 June 1933: 'The present moment. 7 o'clock on June 26th: [...] I after reading Henry 4 Pt one saying whats the use of writing; reading, imperfectly, a poem by Leopardi'.

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

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

Samuel Johnson : Thoughts On the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands

'Adam Smith, Sir [-] informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet, Say Stella, - feel you no content, Reflecting on a life well-spent? Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "they do well", said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is". Beattie's Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", but preferred the "Pastor Fido", of which he spoke with rapture'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Smith

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

Miguel (de) Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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: W.H.(Bill) Tilman 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

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

Joseph Moyle Sherer : The Story of a Life. By the Author of Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and Italy, Recollections of the Peninsula, &c

'Spent a quiet day at home. Read "The Story of a Life" by Sherer; a powerfully written book with vivid description and truth of portraiture, both as to human character and to the effects of the scenery of nature. It has much interest, and a fine vein of religious morality distinguishes it from the commonplace productions of literature'.

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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Sharpe Print: Book

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

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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Princess Caroline, Princess of Wales 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

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

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

William Shakespeare : Pericles

Saturday 21 July 1934: 'I am reading Sh[akespea]re plays the fag end of the morning. Have read, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, & Coriolanus.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Titus Andronicus

Saturday 21 July 1934: 'I am reading Sh[akespea]re plays the fag end of the morning. Have read, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, & Coriolanus.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Coriolanus

Saturday 21 July 1934: 'I am reading Sh[akespea]re plays the fag end of the morning. Have read, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, & Coriolanus.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Troilus and Cressida

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

William Shakespeare : Pericles

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Taming of the Shrew

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

James Thomson : The Seasons

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

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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Wednesday 23 January 1935: 'I am reading the Faery Queen [sic] -- with delight. I shall write about it.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

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

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

William Roscoe : [pre-publication comments 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

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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

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: Janet Case Print: Book

William Shakespeare : 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

Samuel Rogers : 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

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'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 and John Wilson Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, 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 Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'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: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Poems by William Wordsworth, including Lyrical Ballads

'I hear nothing of the literary world very interesting except that people are commending some of Lord Byron's melodies as incomparably beautiful and laughing immoderately at Mr Wordsworth's new prefaces which certainly excel all that ever was written in this world in egotism vanity and absurdity'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg 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

E.M. Forster : Celestial Omnibus, 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

Thomas Gillespie : [various pieces in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, September 1820]

'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

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

Madame de Sevigne : 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

William Shakespeare : The Ages of Man: Shakespeare's Image of Man and Nature

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

William Wordsworth :

'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

William Wordsworth : 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

William Wordsworth : letters

Thursday 13 June 1940: '[Lord] Haw-Haw, objectively announcing defeat -- victory on his side of the line, that is -- again & again, left us about as down as we've yet been. We sat silent in the 9 o'clock dusk; & L. could only with difficulty read Austen Chamberlain. I found the Wordsworth letters my only drug.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

Madame de Sevigne : letters

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. Even through the centuries his acid dandified somehow supercilious well what? -- cant find the word -- this manner of his, this character penetrates; & moreover reminds me of someone I dislike [...] Theres a ceremony in him that reminds me of Tom [ie T. S. Eliot]. Theres a parched artificial cruelty'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book

Thomas Salmon : A New Geographical and Historical Grammar

'[After sighting land believed by captain and crew of Jamaica Packet to be Graciosa, island in the Azores] the next thing was to get the Captain to ly to, as it was very dangerous for him to proceed on his way, thro' a cluster of Islands, of which he was confessedly ignorant. This being agreed to, we all returned to the Cabin. Read the description of the Island from Salmon's Geographical Grammar. We're charmed to find it produces every thing we want, Sheep, poultry, bread, wine and a variety of Vegetables, besides the finest fruits in the world.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw and other passengers on board Jamaica Packet Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'Several of the officers [participating in military review at Wilmingtown] came up to dine, amongst others Coll: Howe, who with less ceremony than might have been expected from his general politeness stept into an apartment adjoining the hall, and took up a book I had been reading, which he brought open in his hand into the company. I was piqued at his freedom, and reproved him with a half compliment to his general good breeding. He owned his fault and with much gallantry promised to submit to whatever punishment I would inflict. You shall only, said I, read aloud a few pages which I will point out, and I am sure you will do Shakespear justice. He bowed and took up the book, but no sooner observed that I had turned up for him, that part of Henry the fourth, where Falstaff describes his company, than he coloured like Scarlet. I saw he made the application instantly; however he read it thro', tho' not with the vivacity he generally speaks; however he recovered himself and coming close up to me, whispered, you will certainly get yourself tarred and feathered; shall I apply to be executioner?'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Schaw Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Howe 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

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'I have been reading Marlow, and I was so much more impressed by him than I thought I should be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightn't 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 shall want a lecture when I see you; to clear up some points about the Plays. I mean about the characters. Why aren't they more human? Imogen and Posthumous and Cymbeline-I find them beyond me-Is this my feminine weakness in the upper region?'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen 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

William Shakespeare : unknown

'I felt rather lonely this Morning at breakfast so I went and unbox'd a Shakspeare - "There's my Comfort".

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'Just now I opened Spencer, and the first Lines I saw were these.- "The noble Heart that harbors vertuous thought, And is with Child of glorious great intent, Can never rest, until it forth have brought Th' eternal Brood of Glory excellent -"

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book

James Crossley : 'Edmund Burkke and the Annual Register'

In looking over the bound vol. of 'Notes and Queries' for the first half of 1851, I find a paper by you entitled 'Edmund Burke and the Annual Register' [Gaskell then provides James Crossley with some more information on this subject].'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Serial / periodical

William Gaskell : Lectures on the Lancashire Dialect

'I have sent your letter on to my husband by this post; but I must just say a very hearty thank you for the pleasure I know it will give him. It will come to him at the same time as my little confession of having thought his lectures worthy of your reading. I have been very much interested by your remarks which {are} will be of course still more interesting to one capable of entering into their full value'.

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Savage Landor

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

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

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

'I think that if you can get hold of a portable 'Excursion' it is a capital book to have with you; also that vol (1st second, [italics] or [end italics] third, I forget whh) of de Quincey's Miscellanies that relates to the Lakes, - places & people as they were in his day. Try for this last, if you don't get it elsewhere at Mrs Nicholson's circulating library at Ambleside'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book

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

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

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

William Shakespeare : The Two Gentlemen of Verona

In a long letter to Edward Garnett, in which Conrad outlines some aspects of his family history, he writes that his father Apollonius N. Korzeniowski translated into Polish Victor Hugo's "La Legende des Siecles", "Travailleurs de la Mer" and " Hernani", Alfred de Vigny's " Chatterton", Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It", "Two Gentlemen of Verona", "A Comedy of Errors" and "Othello" . 'These I remember seeing in proofs when sent for his correction.[...] Some of these I've read when I could be no more than eight or nine years old.' [See also additional comments.]

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Codex, Sheet, One page of his father's translation into Polish.

James T. Fields : "On a Book of Sea-Mosses. Sent to an Eminent English Poet" 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

James T. Fields : "On a Book of Sea-Mosses. Sent to an Eminent English Poet" in The Boston Book, being Specimens of Metropolitan Literature

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas 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

William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night, Or What You Will.

'I am to act Orsino (the Duke) in "Twelfth Night" at the Jenkins’. I could not resist that; it is such a delightful part; and I got them to put off my rehearsals to the last moment, so that I may get a fortnight with you in London and a fortnight with Bob in France: for that must be done this time, [italics]couteque coute [end italics]. I am not altogether satisfied that I shall do Orsino [italics]comme il faut[end italics]; but the Jenkins are pleased, and that is the great affair.'

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

Adam Smith : [unknown]

'I know I shall never be wise enough in a tete a tete with a girl who does not read poetry & novels but Adam Smith, Niall etc. & "has no sense of humour but takes everything literally".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Miss Thompson Print: Book

E M Forster : The Eternal Moment

'I can't tell you what delight and happiness The Eternal Moment has been to me, and I can't thank you enough for your very great kindness in sending it to me. Even though I was undergoing the horrors of a bad attack of influenza, I realised what a wonderful book it is. Well, all I know is that "The Machine Stops" made me feel as though I had come out of dark tunnel in which I had always lived into an immense open space, and were seeing things living for the first time. I believe it is the most tremendous short story of our generation. But then the whole book has got every quality of beauty and truth and illumination. I do think "The Point of It" is such a wonderful story too, and "The Eternal Moment" is enough to frighten one out of one's wits - but not to frighten one only. It is, in a way, the most terrifying ghost story I have ever read. The strange thing about these stories is that every time one reads them and I've read them all several times already, one finds fresh beauties in them. They seem to have an inexhaustible store.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell 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

Benjamin Disraeli : Vivian Grey

Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, letter postmarked 30 April 1845: 'You ask me questions, "if I like novels," [...] There is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago, -- well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end [italics]must[end italics] come, you feel -- and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you .. that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on and lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there [...] At this moment, Mr Somebody, a good man [...] "in answer from a question from Violet, drew from his pocket a small, neatly written manuscript, and, seating himself on an inverted wine-cooler, proceeded to read the following brief remarks upon the characteristics of the Maeso-gothic literature" -- This ends the page, -- which you don't turn at once! But when you [italics]do[end italics], in bitterness of soul, turn it, you read -- "On consideration, I" (Ben, himself) "shall keep them for Mr Colburn's 'New Magazine" -- and deeply you draw thankful breath!'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Browning Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Vivian Grey

Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, 1 May 1845: 'Once I sate up all night to read Vivian Grey'.

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

William Marshall : Rural Economy of the Midland Counties, The; Including the Management of Livestock in Leicestershire and its Environs'

'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

William Wordsworth : [poems]

'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

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

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

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'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shackleton

Samuel Rogers : Human Life

'I have thought of your lines, and will claim your pardon when I suggest another alteration. The boy and the butterfly, though a beautiful, is a common image; and harebells have not only the same objection, but they are so seldom seen in cultivated ground that the name brings the idea of a wood or wild scene. I therefore prefer the boy's pursuit of insects and flowers in general to these particular instances.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Rogers : Human Life, A Poem

'I have received Mr Roger's poem of which I was happy to hear an admirable Character at Bath & in Company where nothing would be said without due Consideration: some Passages were particularly admired.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: friends of Crabbe Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : Human Life, A Poem

'I found your Poem some days before at Mr Hoare's who has paid his Annual Visit to Bath. Give me full Credit when I assure you that I heard, no inferior or ordinary Judge speak feelingly, warmly and accurately of the Verses. Those on Page 41 are most admired by Ladies who feel tenderly & correctly & indeed, though I have other passages in as high Estimation & indeed higher, I am [underlined twice] not [end underlining] insensible to the Images which those lines Excite'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: lady friends of Crabbe Print: Book

Samuel Rogers : Human Life, A Poem

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

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

William Lisle Bowles : Parochial History of Bremhill, The

'The reason for my not mentioning the History of Bremhill was this. I had not read at that time more than a very few pages: I knew nothing of Wansdike, nothing of Tanhill, and could not have told in what county, scarcely in what kingdom, were Avebury and Silbury [Crabbe details his activities whilst not reading the book] I am not a reader of topgraphy, though at one time I corresponded with John Nichols. I always had an opinion that it was extremely dull and I even now suspect that yours is not the genuine sort, for I understand you very well and to say nothing of the knowledge acquired, have been amused. The account of parishes and their "fat rectors" is most assuredly correct, lamentably correct [...] Your natural history and more especially your account of Kelloway rock revived in me the desire of seeng that part of the county [but, he says, his health prevents this] I read the more learned portion of the work with all the interest I could acquire and really by the time I had finished the notes on Chap. 2nd I conceived that I understood the matter like a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine. I mean in its pristine glory. [Crabbe then praises Bowles for inspiring feeling in his readers, which is unusual for those who write on monuments] But seriously, though I like your book the better because it engages me by subjects which I partly understand, yet I dare not affirm that a rigid antiquary would approve any portion of the work, except that which I either do not comprehend or cannot relish....'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

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

William Shakespeare :

Leonard Woolf to Desmond MacCarthy, 26 February 1905: 'The books you gave me were a godsend at once. I had to travel for two nights & a day in a bullock waggon through the jungle in order to reach this place [Jaffna]. For discomfort it was simply hell. I had to lie on my back on the hard floor of the waggon & was battered & jolted along for 36 hours but I took one of the small Shakespeare volumes with me in my pocket, & it helped me to forget my aching bones.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Coningsby

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

E. M. Forster : Where Angels Fear to Tread

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 29 October 1905: 'The taupe sent his book to me last week. It is really extraordinary that it is as amusing as it is. It is a queer kind of twilight humour don't you think [...] What enraged me in the book was the tragedy. If it is supposed to [italics]be[end italics] a tragedy it's absolutely hopeless; if it's supposed to be amusing, it simply fails.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf 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

Tom Hopkinson : [diary notebook]

'I have read Tom's [note]book. I had no right to perhaps, without telling him but he has read mine and I did. It gave me a real shock - perhaps because it so confirmed my own picture of what happened and which he so strenuously denied [...] Of course it is painful to me to read of all his natural, happy ecstasy over Frances, because it shows me so clearly what I have missed in him'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown

Tom Hopkinson : I have been Drowned

'Every day I become more aware of the extraordinary interpenetration of people's lives. I think of the share Emily had in Djuna's book ['Nightwood'], of the share Emily will have in mine if I can write it, of the small share I have in hers and may have in Siepmann's, of the way I saw something in Tom's drowning story ['I have been Drowned'] of which he was unaware and which Emily brought to flower so that now he has written a quite extraordinary story, beyond anything he has done before and which gave me the same feeling of strangeness, delight, almost awe that Emily's two last poems, "Melville" and "The Creation" gave me'.

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White

William Wordsworth : [Poems]

'When she [Emily Coleman] reads and loves anything she makes it part of her, underlining with a peculiar heaviness... If you borrow Emily's Wordsworth you will read not Wordsworth but Emily's Wordsworth. She will fearlessly correct and alter passages. She does not read; she flings herself upon and passionately possess a work...'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Print: Book

William Wordsworth : [Poems]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Coleman Print: Book

Tom Hopkinson : Man Below, The

'While admiring Tom's book ['The Man Below', 1939] I have great pleasure in finding its weaknesses and though I cannot help admitting there are passages in it far beyond my own powers, I feel resentful of this and that in some way such passages must be due to my influence or to Tom's having stolen them from me. Yet even in his earliest, crudest work... there are indications of such descriptive powers.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White Manuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : As You Like It

Leonard Woolf to Saxon Sydney-Turner, 24 June 1906: 'Here an enterprising female has started a Shakespeare Reading Society. We read As You Like It on Friday. It was not quite as bad as it might have been & I had expected the worst. There was considerable difficulty over the word copulation "I press in here, Sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives" was allowed to pass, because no one was quite sure whether it referred to grammar or sexual intercourse. It was only the weight of my assurance that it referred to the former that induced Touchstone not to leave it out. I was Jaques.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Shakespeare Reading Society Print: Book

E. M. Forster : The Longest Journey

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 7 July 1907: 'My brother sent me The Longest Journey. Don't you think it is an astonishing & irritating production? What a success he will be! For people will think it all so clever. I thought on every other page that he was really going to bring something off, but it all fades away into dim humour & the dimmer ghosts of unrealities. It might have been so magnificent & is a mere formless meandering. The fact is I don't think he knows what reality is, & as for experience the poor man does not realize that practically it does not exist. Still his mind interests me, its curious way of touching on things in the rather precise & charming way in which his hands (I remember) used to touch things vaguely.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book

E. M. Forster : A Room with a View

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 25 November 1908: 'I have been reading Forster's last book [A Room with a View] & as last year, at about the same time, it has just stirred the fringe of my brain [goes on to describe having recently had to view, in official capacity, the body of a murdered native woman] [...] I had no idea before that the smell of a decomposing human being is so infinitely fouler than anything else. Is that reality according to Forster? I believe last year I thought that he thought it is. But this book which appears to me really rather good & sometimes thoroughly amusing is absolutely muddled, isn't it?'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

[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

William Shakespeare : [Plays]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Midsummer Night's Dream, A

'Whoever reads the Part of the Fairies in the [italics] Midsummer Night's Dream [end italics] may easily perceive how many beautiful Images [italics] Milton [end italics] has borrowed thence to adorn his Masque of [italics] Comus [end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded

[having been given some money by Samuel Richardson] 'I really was confunded, till, recollecting that I had read [italics] Pamela [end italics], and been told it was written by one Mr [italics] Richardson [end italics], I asked him whether he was not the Author of it? He said, he was the Editor: I told him, my Surprize was now over, as I found he had only given to the incomparable [italics] Pamela [end italics] the Virtues of his own worthy Heart'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington 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

William Wordsworth : unknown

'Oh dear, [...] that's what comes of living alone in the rain and reading Wordsworth.'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West

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

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

E. M. Forster : Where Angels Fear to Tread

'[George Macaulay] Trevelyan wrote to Leonard Woolf (December 1905 [...]) "I wonder whether you will have seen E. M. Forster's novel 'Where Angels Fear to Tread': it is worth reading, but some people like it a great deal, others, like myself, only rather."'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Trevelyan

E. M. Forster : works

E. M. Forster to Syed Ross Masood, 2 July 1909: 'Something exciting is coming on [...] The Minister for Foreign Affairs has read the works of your humble servant, has approved of them, & has asked me to dinner in consequence [...] I am looking forward to it, and am not in a funk, for Grey is not only charming, but simple, I hear: I do know his brother & sister a little.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Edward Grey Print: Unknown

William James : Memories and Studies

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Emily Dickinson : poems

'In odd moments when I am at a loose end (about eleven minutes in the day) I read Emily Dickinson.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Harold Nicolson Print: Book

William Wollaston : Religion of Nature Delineated, The

'[italics] Wollaston's [end italics] Religion of Nature Delineated, tho' frequently intermingled with Mathematical Proofs, is yet so plain, that it demonstrates the Authors Thoughts clearly; which whoever does, can never fail to write with equal Perspicuity.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book

William Woolaston : Religion of Nature Delineated, The

'Mr [italics] Woolaston's [end italics] Religion of Nature Delineated, shews us powerfully, how much a Lye offends the Creator; as I am tax'd with numerous Quotations, which are tedious (as soom of my Readers tell me) I shall not borrow one from him, but refer the Learned to his inimitable Work; though I am persuaded, no Person who has not a clear Head, can taste his Beauties'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington 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

Edmund Wilson : Through the Embassy Window; Harold Nicolson

'As I read the "New Yorker" article (getting more and more indignant) I thought, "This man, although he is saying some exceedingly foolish things, is a man of intelligence who also writes very well." '

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West Print: Newspaper

Thomas Stevenson : 'British Storms' in Good Words

'I should like, by the way, to hear more about my father's lecture; was it much on the same rails as the Good Words article?'

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

Elizabeth Madox Roberts : Time of Man, The

'I am a little tired of writing eulogies. I wrote one of Asch the other day, and I am writing one of Lucy Madox Roberts whose book I immensely admire.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book

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

Elizabeth Madox Roberts : Time of Man, The

'Mummy is now reading "[T]he Time of Man", so you can't have it back just yet: but you'll get it some day'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Gwendolyn, 'Stella' Bowen Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Composed Upon Westminster Bridge'

'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

Thomas Stevenson : letter (in "Nature")

'I have been reading a paper of my father's in Nature.'

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

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

William Wordsworth : "She Was a Phantom of Delight"

'The more I read of Mr. Hawthorne's writings the more intense does my admiration become. I read over the other day a part of his "House of the Seven Gables" and I don't remember any delineation of character under Shakespeare's that is to me so exquisitely fascinating as his of Phoebe, and it is the one I think, among all his characters which mark him most of all as a man of very great genius, for in the hands of any but such a man, instead of being as she is "A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still and bright With something of an Angel light." she would have been a common place stupid creature who only was good because she had not will to be bad [...] The contrast too of the restless minded metaphysical Holgrave always searching into the cause of things, and his tremendous delight in watching the development of character are admirable [underlined]. This latter feature is I am sure a marking characteristic of Mr. Hawthorne's and I just wish to warn him that though I have in thought [underlined] quite an agonizing sympathy with him in it, yet when carried to such a pitch as he does in practice that he won't give a hand to a pair of poor lovers that have fallen into the gutter on a rainy night because his part is only to be a spectator. I have no patience with him, and beg to say if I catch him at anything like that I will commit an assault upon him as sure as fate. I should tell you, as more important than any thing that I can say on the subject, that for the first time Papa read "The House of the Seven Gables" a few days ago [...] he said that if anyone wished to give a very favorable notion to a non-German reader of Jean Paul Richter's style of thought and sentiment they could not do it more successfully than by pointing out many passages in it [i.e. the Hawthorne], and when I tell you that Papa admires him more than any Author of his class by far, and has often regretted our not being German scholars simply on his account you will have an idea....'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret De Quincey Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'"Flimsy novel language disgusts" her; and she "perceives a difference between 'Sir Charles Grandison' and the common novels one now meets with, like that between roast beef and whipt syllabub".'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart 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

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

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

[Signature] R.L.H. Stevenson 'You don’t know what H. means, ha? I have been reading Nym; and that’s the humour of it.'

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

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'My real object in writing is to make a confession-which is to take back a whole cartload of goatisms which I used at Fritham and elsewhere in speaking of a certain great English writer-the greatest: I have been reading Marlow, and I was so much more impressed by him than I thought I should be, that I read Cymbeline just to see if there mightnt be more in the great William than I supposed.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf 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

E. M. Forster : Maurice

E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915: 'You can scarcely imagine the loneliness of such an effort as this [Forster's novel of homosexual love, Maurice] -- a year's work! [...] Carpenter has read and liked it, but he's too unliterary to be helpful [...] Roger Fry & Sydney [Waterlow] have also read the book, and their opinions, being totally unbiased, are interesting. R. agrees with you that it is beautiful and the best work I have done. S. finds it moving, and persuasive to all but bigots, admirable as a sociological tract, full of good things, but he finds the characters weighed down by these'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Carpenter Manuscript: Unknown

E. M. Forster : Maurice

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry Manuscript: Unknown

E. M. Forster : Maurice

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Waterlow Manuscript: Unknown

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

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

Emmanuel Las Cases : Memorial de Sainte Helene: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations o the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena

'As for reading, I have much to say of the "Memoires de l'Europe sous Napoleon", but not time for it till quiet in my own house. I piously believe them genuine; they have the [italics] sceau [end italics] of his genius and of his profound art. I am also reading "Journal de Las Cases". I shut one book where he himself details the precautions taken to secure personal liberty under his government, the strict laws for the purpose, no person could be kept in prison a day without so, and so, and so, judges, privy council, and I know not what. I opened the other where Las Cases says that on looking over papers at St Helena, the Emperor was himself surprised to see the number of books prohibited and of [italics] persons arrested by the police [end italics], whom he had never heard of and knew nothing about'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book

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

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

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

Thomas Thomson : Annals of Philosophy

'Will you remember us kindly to Mr Dumont, and tell him that I have received his letter; and, that since I wrote to him, I have found No 1 and 2 of Thompson's "Annals of Philosophy" - the Report of the Committee of the H of commons on Transportation to Botany Bay (July 10 12)'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Serial / periodical

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

James Mackintosh : Edinburgh Review [review of Madame de Stael's 'De l'Allemagne']

'The review [by Maria Edgeworth] of "Les Peines et les Recompenses" [French edition by Dumont of Bentham's treatise] cannot please Sir Js Mackintosh because it expresses sentiments on [italics] utility [end italics] different from those which he has endeavored, contrary to his conscience, to establish in compliment we suppose to Madame de Stael, in his "Edinburgh Review" of her "Allemagne".'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Lovell Edgeworth Print: Serial / periodical

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

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

August Wilhelm von Schlegel : [Essays]

'Mr Schlegel's Essays are most certainly worth reading, altho' you will not entirely agree with him in many of his opinions'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book

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

Benjamin Constant : Adolphe

'By the bye have you read Mr C.'s "Adolphe"? It divides the whole world, and I think the general opinion seems to be that it is not worthy of the talents he is supposed to possess. Nevertheless one must see that it has been written by a man of no common mind, and by a close observer of human nature under the particular situation which he describes. At least I should think he only expresses what hundreds of men have felt when they have been hampered and tied down by an unfortunate connection which they vainly wish but have not force of mind enough to break through. And now I must tell you that I am very bold in defending it for my oracle Mr Whishaw (my husband has not read it), is at the head of a large party who abuse it; but they will talk of it as a novel, and as such I am quite willing to allow that it has no great interest or merit; but take it as he calls it, an anecdote, and read it without the intention of being amused, but merely as a study of character, and surely it has considerable merit. It is impossible that the Lady can be intended for Madame de Stael, altho' many traits point out his own vacillating character in "Adolphe", and perhaps some of the scenes may have been drawn from life. I should very much like to have your opinion, and still more Mr Edgeworth's, for a man must from his knowledge of men in the world, be a better judge of such subjects than a woman'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Romilly Print: Book

Benjamin Constant : Adolphe

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Whishaw Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'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: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : [papers left at his death]

'In this [producing a biography of Johnson] he has not been very successful, as I have found upon a perusal of those papers, which have been since transferred to me. Sir John Hawkins's ponderous labours, I must acknowledge, exhibit a [italics] farrago [end italics], of which a considerable portion is not devoid of entertainment to the lovers of literary gossiping; but besides its being swelled out with long unnecessary extracts from various works [...], a very small part of it relates to the person who is the subject of the book; and, in that, there is such an inaccuracy in the statement of facts, as in so solemn an author is hardly excusable, and certainly makes his narrative very unsatisfactory'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

William Mason : Memoirs of Gray

'Instead of melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray [ie connecting quotations, conversation and letters with narrative]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

William Mason : [Memoir of William Whitehead]

'That the conversation of a celebrated man, if his talents have been exerted in conversation, will best display his character, is, I trust, too well established in the judgment of mankind, to be at all shaken by a sneering observation of Mr Mason, in his "Memoirs of Mr William Whitehead", in which there is literally no "Life", but a mere dry narrative of facts'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell 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

Samuel Johnson : [memoranda of his reading]

'He appears, from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to have at various times attempted, or at least planned, a methodical course of study, according to computation, of which he was all his life fond, as it fixed his attention steadily on something without, and prevented his mind from preying upon itself. Thus I find in his handwriting the number of lines in each of two of Euripides' Tragedies, of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books of the Aeneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphosis, of some parts of Theocritus, and of the tenth satire of Juvenal; and a table, shewing at the rate of various numbers a day (I suppose verses to be read), what would be, in each case, the total amount in a week, month, and year'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [original notes for "Irene"]

'The hand-writing [in the original sketch for "Irene"] is very difficult to read, even by those who were best acquainted with Johnson's mode of penmanship which at all times was very particular. The King having accepted of this manuscript as a literary curiosity, Mr Langton made a fair and distinct copy of it, which he ordered to be bound up with the original and the printed tragedy; and the volume is deposited in the King's library.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [original notes for "Irene"]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Langton Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [original notes for "Irene"]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: George III Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady

'Clarissa Harlowe. Have read 1/3 of [...] Certainly I am bored, but the book is not tedious through repetition -- the endless variety and modulations are not in themselves interesting enough [...] Granted her premises about copulation and relations, Cl. deduces with delicacy and truth. Within her conventions, she is sound. She is tragic and charming. Rich[ardson]. had a tragic mind [quotes passages] [...] 'The book raises the question of subject-matter. Within its limits it is great. But what limits!'

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

William Shakespeare : [History Plays]

'[editor's words] Previous to her arrival in Stirlingshire she had learnt to read with distinctness and propriety; and, under the tuition of Mrs Marshall, became an adept in this rare accomplishment. In books she soon discovered a substitute even for a playmate: her first hero was Wallace, with whom she became enamoured, by learning to recite Blind Harry's Lays. Two or three of Shakespeare's historical plays came in her way; the history of England followed. She happened to meet with Ogilvie's translation of Homer's Iliad, and soon learnt to idolize Achilles, and almost to dream of Hector'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton 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

Samuel Johnson : Irene

'Mr Peter Garrick told me, that Johnson and he went together to the Fountain tavern, and read it over, and that he afterwards solicited Mr Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury-lane theatre, to have it acted at his house'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Irene

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Peter Garrick Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal

'The Reverend Dr Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, to whom I am indebted for some obliging communications, was then a student at Oxford, and remembers well the effect which "London" produced. Every body was delighted with it; and there being no name to it, the first buzz of the literary circles was "here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Douglas Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Epitaph on Philips, a Musician

'This Epitaph [on 'Philips, a musician'] is so exquisitely beautiful that I remember even Lord Kames, strangely prejudiced as he was against Dr Johnson, was compelled to allow it very high praise'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Home, Lord Kames Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Life of Savage

'Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, that upon his return from Italy he met with it [Johnson's "Life of Savage"] in Devonshire, knowing nothing of its authour [sic], and began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joshua Reynolds Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [Plan or prospectus for his dictionary]

'Dr Taylor told me, that Johnson sent his [italics] Plan [end italics; for Johnson's dictionary] to him in manuscript, for his perusal; and that when it was lying on his table, Mr William Whitehead happened to pay him a visit, and being shewn it, was highly pleased with such parts of it as he had time to read, and begged to take it home with him, which he was allowed to do; that from him it got into the hands of a noble Lord, who carried it to Lord Chesterfield'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Taylor Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [Plan or prospectus for his dictionary]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Whitehead Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [Plan or prospectus for his dictionary]

'[extract of a letter from the Earl of Orrery to Dr Birch] I have just now seen the specimen of Mr Johnson's dictionary, addressed to Lord Chesterfield. I am much pleased with the plan, and I think the specimen is one of the best that I have ever read. Most specimens disgust, rather than prejudice us in favour of the work to follow; but the language of Mr Johnson's is good, and the arguments are properly and modestly expressed'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Boyle, 5th Earl of Orrery Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Vanity of Human Wishes, The

'His "Vanity of Human Wishes" has less of common life, but more of a philosophick dignity than his "London". More readers, therefore, will be delighted with the pointed spirit of "London", than with the profound reflection of "The Vanity Of Human Wishes". Garrick, for instance, observed in his sprightly manner, with more vivacity than regard to just discrimination, as is usual with wits, "When Johnson lived much with the Herveys, and saw a good deal of what was passing in life, he wrote his 'London', which is lively and easy. When he became more retired, he gave us his 'Vanity of Human Wishes', which is as hard as Greek. Had he gone on to imitate another satire, it would have been as hard as Hebrew".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Vanity of Human Wishes, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Garrick Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.

James Boswell : [account given to him by Mrs Williams]

'[referring to a dispute over whether Johnson wrote certain papers in "The Adventurer"] Mrs Williams told me that, "as he had [italics] given [end italics] those Essays to Dr Bathurst, who sold them at two guineas each, he never would own them; nay, he used to say that he did not [italics] write [end italics] them: but the fact was, that he [italics] dictated [end italics] them,while Bathurst wrote". I read to him Mrs Williams's account; he smiled, and said nothing'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [letter from Johnson to Lord Chesterfield]

'[Robert Dodsley] then told Dr Adams, that Lord Chesterfield had shewn him the letter [in which Johnson refused his patronage]. "I should have imagined (replied Dr Adams) that Lord Chesterfield would have concealed it". "Poh! (said Dodsley) do you think a letter from Johnson could hurt Lord Chesterfield? Not at all, Sir. It lay upon his table where any body might see it. He read it to me; said, 'this man has great powers', pointed out the severest passages, and observed how well they were expressed".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Dodsley Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Johnson : [letter from Johnson to Lord Chesterfield]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Manuscript: Letter

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

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

Samuel Johnson : [memoranda for a projected literary journal]

'In one of his little memorandum-books I find the following hints for his intended "Review or Literary Journal": "[italics] The Annals of Literature, foreign as well as domestick. [end italics] Imitate Le Clerk - Bayle - Barberac. Infelicity of Journals in England. Works of the learned. We cannot take in all. Sometimes copy from foreign Jouralists. Always tell".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Codex, memorandum book

Samuel Johnson : Dictionary

'The part of your "Dictionary" which you have favoured me with the sight of has given me such an idea of the whole, that I most sincerely congratulate the publick upon the acquisition of a work long wanted, and now executed with an industry, accuracy, and judgement, equal to the importance of the subject. You might, perhaps, have chosen one in which your genius would have appeared to more advantage; but you could not have fixed upon any other in which your labours would have done such substantial service to the present age and to posterity'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Birch Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [Plan for his dictionary]

'[Mr Charles Burney] had been so much delighted with Johnson's "Rambler" and the "Plan" of his "Dictionary", that when the great work was announced in the newspapers as nearly finished, he wrote to Dr Johnson, begging to be informed when and in what manner his "Dictionary" would be published; intreating, if it should be by subscription, or he should have any books at his own disposal, to be favoured with six copies for himself and his friends'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : Dictionary

'Let the Preface [to Johnson's Dictionary] be attentively perused, in which is given, in a clear, strong, and glowing style, a comprehensive, yet particular view of what he had done; and it will be evident, that the timed he employed upon it [the Dictionary] was relatively short. [Boswell then comments on the great praise the Dictionary received] One of its excellencies has always struck me with peculiar admiration: I mean the perspicuity with which he has expresed abstract scientifick notions.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [essays]

'all the esays [in the "Universal Visitor"] marked with two [italics] asterisks [end italics] have been ascribed to him; but I am confident, from internal evidence, that of these, neither "The Life of Chaucer", "Reflections on the State of Portugal", nor an "Essay on Architecture", were written by him. I am equally confident, upon the same evidence, that he wrote "Further Thoughts on Agriculture"; being the sequel of a very inferiour essay on the same subject, and which, though carried on as if by the same hand, is both in thinking and expression so far above it, as to leave no doubt of its true parent; and that he also wrote "A Dissertation on the State of Literature and Authors", and "A Dissertation on the Epitaphs Written by Pope".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : Idler, The

'Yet there are in the "Idler" several papers which shew as much profundity of thought, and labour of language, as any of this great man's writings'. [Boswell mentions numbers 14, 24, 41, 43, 51, 52, 58 and 89]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

'This Tale ["Rasselas"], with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shews us that this stage of our being is full of "vanity and vexation of spirit". [Boswell comments on its value] Voltaire's "Candide", written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's "Rasselas"; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say, that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only by wanton profanness to obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending Providence: Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

E. M. Forster : short stories

'Peace has been lost on the earth and only lives outside it, in places where my imagination has not been trained to follow [...] [literature] has committed itself too deeply to the worship of vegetation. 'Re-reading my old short stories have [sic] forced the above into my mind. It was much easier to write when I believed that Wessex was waiting to return, and for the new belief I haven't been properly trained.'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster

Thomas Sheridan : Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, The

'I could not but smile, at the same time that I was offended, to observe Sheridan, in "The Life of Swift", which he afterwards published, attempting, in the writhings of his resentment, to depreciate Johnson, by characterising him as "A writer of gigantick fame in these days of little men"; that very Johnson whom he once so highly admired and venerated'.

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

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

James Macpherson : Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland

'At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr James Macpherson as translations of [italics] Ossian [end italics], was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr Fordyce, Dr Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children". Dr Johnson did not know that Dr Blair had just published a "Dissertation", not only defending their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems of [italics] Homer [end italics] and [italics] Virgil [end italics].'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

James Macpherson : Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland

'At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr James Macpherson as translations of [italics] Ossian [end italics], was at its height. Johson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr Fordyce, Dr Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, "Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children". Dr Johnson did not know that Dr Blair had just published a "Dissertation", not only defending their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems of [italics] Homer [end italics] and [italics] Virgil [end italics].'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Blair Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas

Texts discussed and quoted from at length in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1930) include Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, to which Forster refers as 'a charming and important (why decried as dull?) composition'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Life of [Richard] Savage

Texts discussed and quoted from at length in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1930) include Samuel Johnson, Life of Savage, to which Forster refers as 'Good tempered account of a trying friend [...] S[avage]. reminds me of what I've just heard of Cyril Conolly [sic]. Lord Tyrconnel= Logan Pearsall Smith.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Preface to Dictionary

Texts discussed and quoted from in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1930) include Samuel Johnson, Preface to the English Dictionary and Plan (addressed to Chesterfield).

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Plan [for Dictionary]

Texts discussed and quoted from in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book (1930) include Samuel Johnson, Preface to the English Dictionary and Plan (addressed to Chesterfield).

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : remarks on Othello

[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

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

Under heading 'Invocation of Poetry by Rhetoric': 'A mass of dead words is set spinning, then kindles. [italics]Or[end italics]: one's taste and critical faculties, thoroughly roused at first, are lulled unaccountably, and one heaves "gorgeous" er "splendid". 'Instances in Romeo & Juliet [Yet now I cannot find them, though they suggested this note and I have been looking at the play most of the evening] [goes on to comment further on topic]'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'I at this time kept up a very frequent correspondence with Sir David [Dalrymple]; and I read to Dr. Johnson to-night the following passage from the letter which I had last received from him: "It gives me pleasure to think that you have obtained the friendship of Mr. Samnel Johnson. He is one of the best moral writers which England has produced. At the same time, I envy you the free and undisguised converse with such a man. May I beg you to present my respects to him, and to assure him of the veneration which I entertain for the author of the 'Rambler' and of 'Rasselas'? Let me recommend this work to you; with the 'Rambler' you certainly are acquainted. In 'Rasselas' you will see a tender-hearted operator, who probes the wound only to heal it. Swift, on the contrary, mangles human nature. He cuts and slashes, as if he took pleasure in the operation, like the tyrant who said, [italics] Ita feri ut se sentiat emori [end italics]." Johnson seemed to be much gratified by this just and well-turned compliment.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple Print: Book

James Thomson : [poems]

'On Thursday, July 28, we again supped in private at the Turk's Head coffee-house. Johnson. "Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether "The Tale of a Tub" be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner." "Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye."'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal

'I was much pleased to find myself with Johnson at Greenwich, which he celebrates in his "London" as a favourite scene. I had the poem in my pocket, and read the lines aloud with enthusiasm : On Thames's banks in silent thought we stood, Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood : Pleas'd with the seat which gave Eliza birth, We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : London Chronicle [review of Grainger's "Sugar Cane, a poem"]

'He wrote a review of Grainger's "Sugar Cane, a Poem", in the "London Chronicle". He told me, that Dr. Percy wrote the greatest part of this review; but, I imagine, he did not recollect it distinctly, for it appears to be mostly, if not altogether, his own'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : [journal]

'From one of his Journals I transcribed what follows : "At church, Oct.—65. " To avoid all singularity; [italics] Bonaventura [end italics] " To come in before service, and compose my mind by meditation, or by reading some portions of scripture. [italics] Tetty [end italics]. " If I can hear the sermon, to attend it, unless attention be more troublesome than useful. " To consider the act of prayer as a reposal of myself upon God, and a resignation of all into his holy hand." '

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

James Boswell : [letter to Johnson from Corsica]

'He kept the greater part of mine [letters] very carefully; and a short time before his death was attentive enough to seal them up in bundles, and ordered them to be delivered to me, which was accordingly done. Amongst them I found one, of which I had not made a copy, and which I own I read with pleasure at the distance of twenty years. It is dated November, 1765, at the palace of Pascal Paoli, in Corte, the capital of Corsica, and is full of generous enthusiasm. After giving a sketch of what I had seen and heard in that island, it proceeded thus: "I dare to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your approbation."'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter

Madame de Genlis : Religion the only Basis of Happiness and true Philosophy, in which the Principles of the modern pretended Philosophers are laid open and refuted

'If among the books of divinity that you are so kindly offered the use of, you can borrow any of the following, they will help to establish you in the belief of the truth of Divine Revelation:- Paley's Evidences of Christianity; Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in Letters to Thomas Paine; Bishop Porteus' Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity; Addison's Evidences of the Christian Religion; Madam Genlis' Religion the only Basis of Happiness and true Philosophy, in which the Principles of the modern pretended Philosophers are laid open and refuted, 2 vols. Butler's Divine Analogy; Bentley against Collins; Bentley's Sermons on the Folly of Atheism; Jenkins Reasonableness and Certainty of the Chrisian Religion, 2 vols. I have lately read the whole of these works with great satisfaction. If you are fond of real philosophy and astronomy, you will be highly pleased with Bentley's Sermons on the Folly of Atheism. Paley's is an extraordinary good work. Butler's Analogy is a very great work.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington 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

Samuel Richardson : [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

Samuel Richardson : [unknown]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Thomas Secker : Lectures on the Catechism of the Church of England

'In this state of affairs I sent to my late partners for Secker's Lectures on the Catechism, Gilpin's Lectures on the same, Wilson's Sermons, 4vols. and Gilpin's Sermons. These are very plain discourses, easy to be understood, and calculated to leave a very lasting impression on the mind. These excellent sermons Mrs L and I read together . . .'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James and Mary Lackington Print: Book

Thomas Wilson : Sermons

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James and Mary 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

William Robertson : History of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

James Thomson : [poetry]

'He allowed high praise to Thomson, as a poet; but when one of the company said he was also a very good man, our moralist contested this with very great warmth, accusing him of gross sensuality and licentiousness of manners. I was very much afraid that in writing Thomson's "Life", Dr. Johnson would have treated his private character with a stern severity, but I was agreeably disappointed; and I may claim a little merit in it, from my having been at pains to send him authentic accounts of the affectionate and generous conduct of that poet to his sisters, one of whom, the wife of Mr. Thomson, schoolmaster, of Lanark, I knew, and was presented by her with three of his letters, one of which Dr. Johnson has inserted in his "Life".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

James Thomson : [letters to his sisters and accounts by them of his character]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Letter

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

James Thomson : [letters to his sister and accounts by them of his character]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Letter

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'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

Samuel Johnson : London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Pope Print: Unknown

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

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

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Oliver Goldsmith Print: Book

Henry Home, Lord Kames : Elements of Criticism

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Dominique Bouhours : [unknown]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

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

William Wordsworth : The Prelude

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.' Forster goes on to quote, for comparison, eight lines from The Prelude XII (opening 'I could no more / Trust the elevation which had made me one / With the great family which still survives [...]', and three lines from Wordsworth's 'Sonnet on Napoleon' (beginning with 'The great events with which old story rings'), continuing with remark: 'I glanced at these two books of the Prelude to see whether Wordsworth's Imagination and Taste had been impaired in the same way as my own.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Sonnet on Napoleon'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Madame de Sevigne : Letters

Passages quoted at length in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1940) include three extracts from the Letters of Madame de Sevigne, the first of which, Forster notes underneath it, 'is not the one I wanted to copy out,' continuing, 'Her orthodox, gaiety, and caution are much better combined in the following,' and announcing the third with 'And still better -- gaiety dominating'.

Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : [novels]

'Speaking of the French novels, compared with Richardson's, he said, they might be pretty baubles, but a wren was not an eagle'. [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

James MacPherson : 'Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem' [from Poems of Ossian]

'The poem of "Fingal", he said, was a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. "In vain shall we look for the [italics] lucidus ordo [end italics], where there is neither end or object, design or moral, [italics] nec certa recurrit imago [italics]".' [account by Dr Maxwell, an Irish London priest friend of Dr Johnson]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands

'His description of its [the situation in the Falklands] miseries in this pamphlet ['Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands'] is one of the finest pieces of eloquence in the English language. Upon this occasion, too, we find Johnson lashing the party in opposition with unbounded severity, and making the fullest use of what he ever reckoned a most effectual argumentative instrument,—contempt. His character of their very able mysterious champion, Junius, is executed with all the force of his genius, and finished with the highest care.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell

Samuel Johnson : Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands

'We talked of his two political pamphlets, "The False Alarm," and "Thoughts concerning Falkland's Islands." Johnson. "Well, sir, which of them did you think the best?" Boswell. "I liked the second best." Johnson. "Why, sir, I liked the first best; and Beattie liked the first best. Sir, there is a subtlety of disquisition in the first that is worth all the fire of the second".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell

Samuel Johnson : False Alarm, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell

William Wordsworth : Sonnets of the Imagination XLII

Transcribed in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1941), under heading 'Wordsworth on Machinery': '"Nor shall your presence, howsoe'er it mar The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar To the Mind's gaining a prophetic sense Of future change, that point of vision, whence May be discovered what in soul you are." '[Sonnets of the Imagination XLII]' This followed by remarks: 'Right! The problem of 1941 has not been better put. And it could be so well put only by someone who had not all the facts.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster 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

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : [novels]

'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

Samuel Richardson : [novels]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Erskine Print: Book

Samuel Paterson : Another Traveller: or Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey through Part of the Netherlands

'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

Samuel Johnson : Prayers and Meditations

'At this time it appears from his "Prayers and Meditations," that he had been more than commonly diligent in religious duties, particularly in reading the Holy Scriptures'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [tale in Mrs Williams's 'Miscellanies']

'Johnson, though remarkable for his great variety of composition, never exercised his talents in fable, except we allow his beautiful tale published in Mrs. Williams's "Miscellanies" to be of that species. I have, however, found among his manuscript collections the following sketch of one: " Glowworm lying in the garden saw a candle in a neighbouring palace,—and complained of the littleness of his own light;—another observed wait a little ;—soon dark,—have outlasted [many] of these glaring lights which are only brighter as they haste to nothing".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [manuscript plan for a fable]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

William Robertson : History of Scotland 1542 - 1603

' [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

William Robertson : History of Scotland 1542 - 1603

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell 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

William Shakespeare :

'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 :

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Tennyson children (boys) Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes :

[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

William Shakespeare :

'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

Edmund Spenser :

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson 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

William Morris : Earthly Paradise, The

'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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'In the spring of 1831 my father was much distressed about the condition of his eyes and feared that he was going to lose his sight [...] He took to a milk diet for some months, which apparently "did good." At all events his eyesight was strong enough to allow him to study Don Quixote in the original.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson 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

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

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

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes : Annals of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

' [Letter from Johnson to Boswell] Last night I corrected the last page of our "Journey to the Hebrides".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: proofs

Samuel Johnson : [diary]

'In his [Johnson's] manuscript diary of this year, there is the following entry: "Nov. 27. Advent Sunday. I considered that this day, being the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was a proper time for a new course of life. I began to read the Greek Testament regularly at 160 verses every Sunday. This day I began the Acts. In this week I read Virgil's 'Pastorals'. I learned to repeat the 'Pollio' and 'Gallus'. I read carelessly the first 'Georgick'." Such evidences of his unceasing ardour, both for "divine and human lore," when advanced into his sixty-fifty year, and notwithstanding his many disturbances from disease, must make us at once honour his spirit, and lament that it should be so grievously clogged by its material tegument. It is remarkable, that he was very fond of the precision which calculation produces. Thus we find in one of his manuscript diaries, "12 pages in 4to Gr. Test, and 30 pages in Beza's folio, comprize the whole in 10 days".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

'[Letter from Boswell to Johnson] Be pleased to accept of my best thanks for your "Journey to the Hebrides", which came to me by last night's post. I did really ask the favour twice; but you have been even with me by granting it so speedily. [italics] Bis dat qui cito dat [end italics]. Though ill of a head cold, you kept me up the greatest part of last night: for I did not stop till I had read every word of your book. I looked back to our first talking of a visit to the Hebrides, which was many years ago, when sitting by ourselves in the Mitre tavern, in London, I think about [italics] witching time o'night [end italics]; and then exulted in contemplating our scheme fulfilled, and a [italics]monumentum perenne [end italics] of it erected by your superiour abilities. I shall only say, that your book has afforded me a high gratification. I shall afterwards give you my thoughts on particular passages. In the mean time, I hasten to tell you of your having mistaken two names, which you will correct in London, as I shall do here, that the gentlemen who deserve the valuable compliments which you have paid them, may enjoy their honours. In page 106, for [italics] Gordon [end italics], read [italics] Murchison [end italics]; and in page 357, for [italics] Maclean [end italics] read [italics] Macleod [end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

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

Samuel Johnson : [Latin verses upon Inchkenneth]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes Manuscript: Unknown, in latin

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'His "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" is a most valuable performance. It abounds in extensive philosophical views of society, and in ingenious sentiment and lively description. A considerable part of it, indeed, consists of speculations which many years before he saw the wild regions which we visited together probably had employed his attention, though the actual sight of those scenes undoubtedly quickened and augmented them. Mr. Orme, the very able historian, agreed with me in this opinion, which he thus strongly expressed:— "There are in that book thoughts which, by long revolution in the great mind of Johnson, have been formed and polished like pebbles rolled in the ocean!"'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Orme Print: Book

James Macpherson : [Ossian poems, culminating in] Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language

'His disbelief of the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, a Highland bard, was confirmed in the course of his journey by a very strict examination of the evidence offered for it: and although their authenticity was made too much a national point by the Scotch, there were many respectable persons in that country who did not concur in this; so that his judgment upon the question ought not to be decried, even by those who differ from him. As to myself, I can only say, upon a subject now become very uninteresting, that when the fragments of Highland poetry first came out, I was much pleased with their wild peculiarity, and was one of those who subscribed to enable their editor, Mr. Macpherson, then a young man, to make a search in the Highlands and Hebrides for a long poem in the Erse language, which was reported to be preserved somewhere in those regions. But when there came forth an Epick Poem in six books, with all the common circumstances of former compositions of that nature; and when, upon an attentive examination of it, there was found a perpetual recurrence of the same images which appear in the fragments; and when no ancient manuscript to authenticate the work was deposited in any publick library, though that was insisted on as a reasonable proof, [italics] who [end italics] could forbear to doubt?'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'The observations of my friend Mr. Dempster in a letter written to me, soon after he had read Dr. Johnson's book, are so just and liberal that they cannot be too often repeated: "There is nothing in the book, from beginning to end, that a Scotchman need to take amiss. What he says of the country is true; and his observations on the people are what must naturally occur to a sensible, observing, and reflecting inhabitant of a convenient metropolis, where a man on thirty pounds a year may be better accommodated with all the little wants of life than Col or Sir Allan. I am charmed with his researches concerning the Erse language, and the antiquity of their manuscripts. I am quite convinced; and I shall rank Ossian and his Fingals and Oscars amongst the nursery tales, not the true history of our country, in all time to come. Upon the whole, the book cannot displease, for it has no pretensions. The author neither says he is a geographer, nor an antiquarian, nor very learned in the history of Scotland, nor a naturalist, nor a fossilist. The manners of the people and the face of the country are all he attempts to describe, or seems to have thought of. Much were it to be wished that they who have traveled into more remote, and of course more curious regions, had all possessed his good sense".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Dempster Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'Mr. Knox, another native of Scotland, who has since made the same tour, and published an account of it, is equally liberal. "I have read (says he) his [Johnson's] book again and again, traveled with him from Berwick to Glenelg, through countries with which I am well acquainted; sailed with him from Glenelg to Rasay, Sky, Rum, Col, Mull, and Icolmkill, but have not been able to correct him in any matter of consequence. I have often admired the accuracy, the precision, and the justness of what he advances, respecting both the country and the people. The Doctor has every where delivered his sentiments with freedom, and in many instances with a seeming regard for the benefit of the inhabitants, and the ornament of the country. His remarks on the want of trees and hedges for shade, as well as for shelter to the cattle, are well founded, and merit the thanks, not the illiberal censure of the natives. He also felt for the distresses of the Highlanders, and explodes-with great propriety the bad management of the grounds, and the neglect of timber in the Hebrides".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Knox Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'Mr. Tytler, the acute and able vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots, in one of his letters to Mr. James Elphinstone, published in that gentleman's "Forty Years' Correspondence," says, "I read Dr. Johnson's Tour with very great pleasure. Some few errors he has fallen into, but of no great importance, and those are lost in the numberless beauties of his work. If I had leisure, I could, perhaps, point out the most exceptionable places; but at present I am in the country, and have not his book at hand. It is plain he meant to speak well of Scotland; and he has in my apprehension done us great honour in the most capital article, the character of the inhabitants".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Tytler Print: Book

William Wordsworth : poetry

'Perhaps, I thought, Wordsworth or Browning or Shelley would have some consolation to offer; all through the War poetry was the only form of literature that I could read for comfort, and the only kind that I ever attempted to write.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Unknown

Edmund Gosse : New Poems

'My dear Weg, I received your book last night ... You know what a wooden hearted curmudgeon I am about contemporary verse .. Hence you will be kind enough to take this from me in a kindly spirit ... "To my daughter" is delicious.'

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

William Wordsworth : unknown

'I flung myself on my bed afterwards and tried to get some comfort from the volume of Wordsworth which had been the delight of my scholarship work in that long-ago that was already beginning to be labelled "pre-war".

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book

William Wordsworth : 'Highland sonnets'

James Spedding to W. H. Thompson, 1834: 'Wordsworth's eyes are better, but not so well [...] Reading inflames them, and so does composing. I believe it was a series of Highland sonnets that brought on the last attack [...] He read me several, that I had not seen or heard before, many of them admirably good: also a long romantic wizard and fairy poem, of the time of Merlin and king Arthur, very pretty but not of the first order: but I should not have expected anything so good from him which was so much out of his beat.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : 'The Egyptian Maid, or, The Romance of the Water Lily'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown

William Wordsworth : 'Michael'

'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 [...] My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, "the dear old fellow," as he called him [...] Fitzgerald notes again: '"I could remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in 'Michael' which he now read us in admiration [...]" 'My father also read Keats and Milton'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Sonnets

'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

Samuel Johnson : Taxation no Tyranny; an answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress

Unfavourable as I am constrained to say my opinion of this pamphlet [Johnson's 'Taxation no Tyranny; an answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress'] was, yet, since it was congenial with the sentiments of numbers at that time, and as every thing relating to the writings of Dr. Johnson is of importance in literary history, I shall therefore insert some passages which were struck out, it does not appear why, either by himself or those who revised it. They appear printed in a few proof leaves of it in my possession, marked with corrections in his own handwriting. I shall distinguish them by Italicks. [various passages are then reproduced]'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell

Samuel Johnson : Taxation no Tyranny; an answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: proof leaves of a pamphlet with handwritten corrections

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'[quoting from the pamphlet "A Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, occasioned by his late Political Publications." by joseph Towers] "I would, however, wish you to remember, should you again address the publick under the character of a political writer, that luxuriance of imagination or energy of language will ill compensate for the want of candour, of justice, and of truth. And I shall only add, that should I hereafter be disposed to read, as I heretofore have done, the most excellent of all your performances, 'The Rambler,' the pleasure which I have been accustomed to find in it will be much diminished by the reflection that the writer of so moral, so elegant, and so valuable a work was capable of prostituting his talents in such productions as 'The False Alarm,' the 'Thoughts on the Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands,' and 'The Patriot.' "

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Towers Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : False Alarm, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Towers

Samuel Johnson : Patriot, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Towers

Samuel Johnson : Thoughts On the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands

'[quoting from the pamphlet "A Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, occasioned by his late Political Publications." by Joseph Towers] "I would, however, wish you to remember, should you again address the publick under the character of a political writer, that luxuriance of imagination or energy of language will ill compensate for the want of candour, of justice, and of truth. And I shall only add, that should I hereafter be disposed to read, as I heretofore have done, the most excellent of all your performances, 'The Rambler,' the pleasure which I have been accustomed to find in it will be much diminished by the reflection that the writer of so moral, so elegant, and so valuable a work was capable of prostituting his talents in such productions as 'The False Alarm,' the 'Thoughts on the Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands,' and 'The Patriot.' "

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Towers

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'I found his " Journey" the common topick of conversation in London at this time, wherever I happened to be. At one of Lord Mansfield's formal Sunday evening conversations, strangely called [italics] Levees [end italics], his Lordship addressed me, "We have all been reading your travels, Mr. Boswell." I answered, "I was but the humble attendant of Dr. Johnson." The Chief Justice replied, with that air and manner which none who ever saw and heard him can forget, "He speaks ill of nobody but Ossian".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Murray, First Earl Mansfield Print: Book

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

William Mason : Elfrida

'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

William Mason : Elfrida

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

William Mason : Elfrida

'I often wondered at his [Johnson's] low estimation of the writings of Gray and Mason. Of Gray's poetry I have, in a former part of this work, expressed my high opinion; and for that of Mr. Mason I have ever entertained a warm admiration. His "Elfrida" is exquisite, both in poetical description and moral sentiment; and his "Caractacus" is a noble drama. Nor can I omit paying my tribute of praise to some of his smaller poems, which I have read with pleasure, and which no criticism shall persuade me not to like'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

William Mason : Caractacus: A Dramatic Poem

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

William Mason : [minor poems]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'Johnson was here solaced with an elegant entertainment, a very accomplished family, and much good company; among whom was Mr. Harris of Salisbury, who paid him many compliments on his "Journey to the Western Islands".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Harris Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'Johnson praised "The Spectator," particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, "Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die.— I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson 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

James Boswell : Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

'[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: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown

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

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'That ingenious and elegant gentleman's [Shenstone's] opinion of Johnson appears in one of his letters to Mr. Greaves, dated Feb. 9, 1760. "I have lately been reading one or two volumes of the Rambler; who, excepting against some few hardnesses in his manner, and the want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most perspicuous, most concise, [and] most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Shenstone Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : Translation of Lobo's Account of Abyssinia

'On Sunday, March 31, I called on him, and shewed him as a curiosity which I had discovered, his "Translation of Lobo's Account of Abyssinia", which Sir John Pringle had lent me, it being then little known as one of his works. He said, "Take no notice of it" or "don't talk of it". He seemed to think it beneath him, though done at six-and-twenty. I said to him, "Your style, Sir, is much improved since you translated this".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

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

William Mason : [Poems]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

James Thomson : [Poems]

'Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels, who compiled Cibber's "Lives of the Poets", was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked,-Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the highest admiration. Well, Sir, (said I,) I have omitted every other line".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

'I observed the great defect of the tragedy of "Othello" was, that it had not a moral; for that no man could resist the circumstances of suspicion which were artfully suggested to Othello's mind. JOHNSON. "In the first place, Sir, we learn from "Othello" this very useful moral, not to make an unequal match; in the second place, we learn not to yield too readily to suspicion. The handkerchief is merely a trick, though a very pretty trick; but there are no other circumstances of reasonable suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio's warm expressions concerning Desdemona in his sleep; and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man. No, Sir, I think "Othello" has more moral than almost any play".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

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

Samuel Sharp : Letters from Italy, describing the Customs and Manners of that Country

'I read (said he [Johnson],) Sharpe's letters on Italy over again, when I was at Bath. There is a great deal of matter in them.'

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

Samuel Johnson : [a legal argument]

'When I read this [Johnson's argument regarding a legal case on the liberty of the pulpit in which Boswell was involved] to Mr. Burke, he was highly pleased, and exclaimed, "Well; he does his work in a workman-like manner".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

James Boswell : [notes of conversation between Wilkes and Dr Johnson]

'Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes talked of the contested passage in Horace's "Art of Poetry", "[italics] Difficile est proprie communia dicere.[end italics]' Mr. Wilkes according to my note, gave the interpretation thus; "It is difficult to speak with propriety of common things; as, if a poet had to speak of Queen Caroline drinking tea, he must endeavour to avoid the vulgarity of cups and saucers". But upon reading my note, he tells me that he meant to say, that "the word [italics]communia [end italics], being a Roman law term, signifies here things [italics]communis juris [end italics], that is to say, what have never yet been treated by any body; and this appears clearly from what followed, "[italics]--Tuque Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus." [end italics] "You will easier make a tragedy out of the Iliad than on any subject not handled before".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilkes Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [paper on an aspect of Scottish law]

'[letter from Boswell to Johnson] Your paper on "Vicious Intromission" is a noble proof of what you can do even in Scotch law.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

' [letter from Boswell to Johnson] I have not yet distributed all your books [presumably a new edition of the "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland"]. Lord Hailes and Lord Monboddo have each received one, and return you thanks. Monboddo dined with me lately, and having drank tea, we were a good while by ourselves, and as I knew that he had read the "Journey superficially", as he did not talk of it as I wished, I brought it to him, and read aloud several passages; and then he talked so, that I told him he was to have a copy [italics] from the authour [end italics]. He begged [italics] that [end italics] might be marked on it'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Burnett, Lord Monboddo Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

' [letter from Sir Alexander Dick to Johnson] I had yesterday the honour of receiving your book of your "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland", which you was so good as to send me, by the hands of our mutual friend, Mr. Boswell, of Auchinleck; for which I return you my most hearty thanks; and after carefully reading it over again, shall deposit in my little collection of choice books, next our worthy friend's "Journey to Corsica". As there are many things to admire in both performances, I have often wished that no Travels or Journeys should be published but those undertaken by persons of integrity and capacity to judge well, and describe faithfully, and in good language, the situation, condition, and manners of the countries past through.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Dick Print: Book

James Boswell : An Account of Corsica: The Journal of a Tour to That Island, & Memoirs of Pascal Paoli

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Alexander Dick Print: Book

William Shaw : [Erse Grammar]

'One Shaw, who seems a modest and a decent man, has written an Erse Grammar, which a very learned Highlander, Macbean, has, at my request, examined and approved.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Macbean Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [proposals for the publication of William Shaw's 'Erse Grammar']

'[letter from Boswell to Johnson] You forget that Mr. Shaw's "Erse Grammar" was put into your hands by myself last year. Lord Eglintoune put it into mine. I am glad that Mr. Macbean approves of it. I have received Mr. Shaw's Proposals for its publication, which I can perceive are written [italics] by the hand of a MASTER [end italics]' [Master here refers to Johnson]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown

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

Samuel Johnson : History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia , the

'[letter from Boswell to Johnson] I lately read Rasselas over again with great satisfaction'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

'On Monday, September 15, Dr. Johnson observed, that every body commended such parts of his "Journey to the Western Islands", as were in their own way. "For instance, (said he,) Mr. Jackson (the all-knowing) told me there was more good sense upon trade in it, than he should hear in the House of Commons in a year, except from Burke. Jones commended the part which treats of language; Burke that which describes the inhabitants of mountainous countries'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Burke Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Jackson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Jones Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [sermon written for Dr Dodd]

'He [Johnson] wrote also "The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren", a sermon delivered by Dr. Dodd [ a clergyman condemned to deatn for fraud], in the chapel of Newgate According to Johnson's manuscript it began thus after the text, What shall I do to be saved?-- "These were the words with which the keeper, to whose custody Paul and Silas were committed by their prosecutors, addressed his prisoners, when he saw them freed from their bonds by the perceptible agency of divine favour, and was, therefore, irresistibly convinced that they were not offenders against the laws, but martyrs to the truth". Dr. Johnson was so good as to mark for me with his own hand, on a copy of this sermon which is now in my possession, such passages as were added by Dr. Dodd. They are not many: whoever will take the trouble to look at the printed copy, and attend to what I mention, will be satisfied of this.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : [sermon written for John Taylor]

'I have no doubt that a good many sermons were composed for Taylor [with whom Johnson and Boswell were staying] by Johnson. At this time I found, upon his table, a part of one which he had newly begun to write: and [italics] Concio pro Tayloro [end italics] appears in one of his diaries. When to these circumstances we add the internal evidence from the power of thinking and style, in the collection which the Reverend Mr. Hayes has published, with the [italics] significant [end italics] title of "Sermons [italics] left for publication [end italics] by the Reverend John Taylor, LL.D.", our conviction will be complete. I, however, would not have it thought, that Dr. Taylor, though he could not write like Johnson, (as, indeed, who could?) did not sometimes compose sermons as good as those which we generally have from very respectable divines. He showed me one with notes on the margin in Johnson's hand-writing; and I was present when he read another to Johnson, that he might have his opinion of it, and Johnson said it was "very well". These, we may be sure, were not Johnson's; for he was above little arts, or tricks of deception.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: Unknown

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]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Taylor Print: Book

James Steuart : Dirleton's Doubts and Questions in the Law of Scotland

I have read, conversed, and thought much upon the subject, and would recommend to all who are capable of conviction, an excellent Tract by my learned and ingenious friend John Ranby, Esq. entitled "Doubts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade." To Mr. Ranby's "Doubts," I will apply Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's expression in praise of a Scotch Law Book, called "Dirleton's Doubts"; "HIS [italics] Doubts [end italics], (said his Lordship,) are better than most people's [italics] Certainties [end italics]."

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke 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

Edmund Smith : 'Thales; a monody, sacred to the memory of Dr. Pococke. In imitation of Spenser'

' [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: Unknown

William Robertson : History of America

'I this evening boasted, that although I did not write what is called stenography, or short-hand, in appropriated characters devised for the purpose, I had a method of my own of writing half words, and leaving out some altogether so as yet to keep the substance and language of any discourse which I had heard so much in view, that I could give it very completely soon after I had taken it down. He defied me, as he had once defied an actual short-hand writer, and he made the experiment by reading slowly and distinctly a part of Robertson's "History of America", while I endeavoured to write it in my way of taking notes. It was found that I had it very imperfectly; the conclusion from which was, that its excellence was principally owing to a studied arrangement of words, which could not be varied or abridged without an essential injury.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

E M Forster : Alexandria: A History and Guide

'I cannot tell you with what delight I found your lovely history of Alexandria, and your most kind letter, awaiting me when I returned here on Thursday. ( I was delayed in London)the book has a beauty that makes one feel calmed -(at the moment I am reading the section on literature) as one feels calmed when looking at certain statues and listening to certain music. I am deeply grateful to you for sending it to me, and am proud to have it inscribed in your handwriting. I wish you could know what pleasure I feel in reading this book. Whilst I was in London, I found people tearing about, and declaring they could read nothing but newspapers. What a strange way of trying to retain one's sanity! For myself, I have been reading Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, and now I am reading Alexandria.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book

Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's Schooldays

'This summer [1857] the tour was to Manchester, Coniston, Inverary Castle, and Carstairs (the home of my father's college friend Monteith). On this journey he read aloud Tom Brown's School-Days to my mother, enjoying it thoroughly.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'He was certainly a keen student of literature, as can be seen from some 1907-8 exercise books which show him working on the "Faerie Queene", at least ten Shakespeare plays and many other texts that were to be of use to him later'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [plays]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book

William Michael Rossetti : Life of John Keats

'Owen turned to his third main interest, the earth sciences, doing his earnest but unscholarly best to tackle the Victorian debate between science and religion. He was soon "reading analysing, collecting, sifting and classifying Evidence" and "grappling as I never did before with the problem of Evolution". He read a statement of the Christian answer to Darwinism but contemptuously wrote "Shallow!" against its discussion of art. His conclusion was probably summed up in a comment he had marked in Keats's letters, "Nothing in this world is proveable"; when he met these words again in W.M. Rossetti's life of Keats, he added, "at least [italics] proved [end italics] W.O.".'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book

William Michael Rossetti : Life of John Keats

'Reading W.M. Rossetti's biography [of Keats] in 1912, he was overcome by its account of Keats's death: "Rossetti guided my groping hand right into the wound, and I touched, for one moment, the incandescent Heart of Keats".'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson.

'I idle finely. I read Boswell’s "Life of Johnson"[…]'

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

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

Soame Jenyns : View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion

'Dr. Mayo having asked Johnson's opinion of Soame Jenyns's "View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion";--JOHNSON. "I think it a pretty book; not very theological indeed; and there seems to be an affectation of ease and carelessness, as if it were not suitable to his character to be very serious about the matter". BOSWELL. "He may have intended this to introduce his book the better among genteel people, who might be unwilling to read too grave a treatise. There is a general levity in the age. We have physicians now with bag-wigs; may we not have airy divines, at least somewhat less solemn in their appearance than they used to be?" JOHNSON. "Jenyns might mean as you say". BOSWELL. "[italics]You[end italics] should like his book, Mrs. Knowles, as it maintains, as you [italics] friends [end italics] do, that courage is not a Christian virtue".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Soame Jenyns : View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

William Marshall : Minutes of Agriculture

'Mr. Allen, the printer, brought a book on agriculture, which was printed, and was soon to be published. It was a very strange performance, the authour having mixed in it his own thoughts upon various topicks, along with his remarks on ploughing, sowing, and other farming operations. He seemed to be an absurd profane fellow, and had introduced in his book many sneers at religion, with equal ignorance and conceit. Dr. Johnson permitted me to read some passages aloud.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

'I told him, that his "Rasselas" had often made me unhappy; for it represented the misery of human life so well, and so convincingly to a thinking mind, that if at any time the impression wore off, and I felt myself easy, I began to suspect some delusion.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes : Leviathan

'Perpetually through my head, interfering with the detached contemplation of Hobbes's "Leviathan" and Mill on "Liberty", ran a sentence from one of the Elizabethan documents: "The Queen of Scots is the mother of a gallant son, but I am a barren stock."'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book

Thomas Stevenson : Lighthouse Construction and Illumination

'I cannot think how I omitted to tell you that I was pleased extremely with the dedication; it seemed to me and Fanny quite right and, if you understand, not too literary for an engineer. I did not want to change a word.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, possibly proof copy

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Edward Fitzgerald to Alfred Tennyson, Christmas 1862: 'I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer and reading Clarissa Harlowe since; you and I used to talk of the book more than 20 years ago. I believe I am better read in it than almost any one in existence now. No wonder, for it is almost intolerably tedious and absurd.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Fitzgerald Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

From William Allingham's 'Reminiscences' of Tennyson (1863-64): 'Oct. 4th [1863] I walked over alone to Farringford [...] Tennyson at luncheon [...]we went down and walked about the grounds [...] We went down the garden [...] and so to the farmyard. "Have you a particular feeling about a farmyard?" he asked, "a special delight in it? I have. The first time I read Shakespeare was on a hay-stack, Othello. I said, 'This man's over-rated.' Boys can't understand Shakespeare."'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson 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

Samuel Johnson : [speeches attributed to Lord Chesterfield]

'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

Henry Home, Lord Kames : Sketches of the History of Man

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

'[letter from Boswell to Johnson] 'I am eager to see more of your Prefaces to the Poets; I solace myself with the few proof sheets which I have'.

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: proof sheets

William Tasker : Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain

'My arrival interrupted for a little while the important business of this true representative of Bayes[a clergyman who wanted Johnson's opinions on his literary works]; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the "Carmen Seculare" of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and performed as a publick entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor and Signor Baretti. When Johnson had done reading, the authour asked him bluntly, "If upon the whole it was a good translation?" Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment, what answer to make; as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance: with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, "Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation." Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed "Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain", came next in review; the bard was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and shewing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, "Is that poetry, Sir?--Is it Pindar?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry".'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets

'[ letter from Boswell to Johnson] The Bishop, to whom I had the honour to be known several years ago, shews me much attention; and I am edified by his conversation. I must not omit to tell you, that his Lordship admires, very highly, your "Prefaces to the Poets".'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Beilby Porteus Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'[from the 1780 Johnsoniana passed to Boswell by Bennet Langton] 'When in good humour he would talk of his own writings with a wonderful frankness and candour, and would even criticise them with the closest severity. One day, having read over one of his "Ramblers", Mr. Langton asked him, how he liked that paper; he shook his head, and answered, "too wordy". At another time, when one was reading his tragedy of "Irene" to a company at a house in the country, he left the room; and somebody having asked him the reason of this, he replied, "Sir, I thought it had been better".'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book, Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : Irene

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Unknown

William Perkins : Armilla Aurea, or The Golden Chain

'At Sturbridge faire last, having by chance loo[k]ed on Mr Whately, Bishop Andrewes, and Mr Perkins on the commandments (in which I owne a secret hand of God) I was clearly convinced that my former practise was sinfull, and deserved the stroak of God's vengeance'.

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book

James Ussher : A Body of Divinitie

'August 26. By reading of Bishop Usher's Body of Divinity, I was convinced of my sinning against the commandments of God in many cases'.

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac Archer Print: Book

Thomas a Kempis : Imitation of Christ

'[from the Johnsoniana imparted by Bennet Langton to Boswell in 1780] In the latter part of his life, in order to satisfy himself whether his mental faculties were impaired, he resolved that he would try to learn a new language, and fixed upon the Low Dutch, for that purpose, and this he continued till he had read about one half of "Thomas a Kempis"; and finding that there appeared no abatement of his power of acquisition, he then desisted, as thinking the experiment had been duly tried'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

'So easy is his style in these "Lives", that I do not recollect more than three uncommon or learned words; one, when giving an account of the approach of Waller's mortal disease, he says, "he found his legs grow tumid"; by using the expression his legs swelled, he would have avoided this; and there would have been no impropriety in its being followed by the interesting question to his physician, 'What that swelling meant?' Another, when he mentions that Pope had emitted proposals; when published or issued would have been more readily understood; and a third, when he calls Orrery and Dr. Delany, writers both undoubtedly veracious, when true, honest, or faithful, might have been used. Yet, it must be owned, that none of these are hard or too big words; that custom would make them seem as easy as any others; and that a language is richer and capable of more beauty of expression, by having a greater variety of synonimes. His dissertation upon the unfitness of poetry for the aweful subjects of our holy religion, though I do not entirely agree with with him, has all the merit of originality, with uncommon force and reasoning.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

'[Johnson was fair to Milton's poetic genius, despite hating his politics] Indeed even Dr. Towers, who may be considered as one of the warmest zealots of [italics] The Revolution Society[end italics] itself, allows, that "Johnson has spoken in the highest terms of the abilities of that great poet, and has bestowed on his principal poetical compositions the most honourable encomiums".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Towers Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [Life of Young in 'Lives of the Poets']

''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

William Mason : Heroick Epistle to Sir William Chambers

'Johnson and Shebbeare were frequently named together, as having in former reigns had no predilection for the family of Hanover. The authour of the celebrated "Heroick Epistle to Sir William Chambers", introduces them in one line, in a list of those "who tasted the sweets of his present Majesty's reign". Such was Johnson's candid relish of the merit of that satire, that he allowed Dr. Goldsmith, as he told me, to read it to him from beginning to end, and did not refuse his praise to its execution'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Unknown

William Mason : Heroick Epistle to Sir William Chambers

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Oliver Goldsmith Print: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

'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

Thomas Astle : [notes on the will of King Alfred]

'[letter from Johnson to Thomas Astle] Your notes on Alfred appear to me very judicious and accurate, but they are too few. Many things familiar to you, are unknown to me, and to most others; and you must not think too favourably of your readers: by supposing them knowing, you will leave them ignorant. Measure of land, and value of money, it is of great importance to state with care. Had the Saxons any gold coin?'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'Dr. Burney related to Dr. Johnson the partiality which his writings had excited in a friend of Dr. Burney's, the late Mr. Bewley, well known in Norfolk by the name of the [italics] Philosopher of Massingham [end italics]: who, from the "Ramblers" and Plan of his "Dictionary", and long before the authour's fame was established by the "Dictionary" itself, or any other work, had conceived such a reverence for him, that he urgently begged Dr. Burney to give him the cover of the first letter he had received from him, as a relick of so estimable a writer.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Bewley Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Bewley Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [excerpt from a work, reprinted in the Bath 'Morning Chronicle']

'A clergyman at Bath wrote to him, that in "The Morning Chronicle", a passage in "The Beauties of Johnson" [unauthorised collection of Johnson's words], article DEATH, had been pointed out as supposed by some readers to recommend suicide, the words being, "To die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly"; and respectfully suggesting to him, that such an erroneous notion of any sentence in the writings of an acknowledged friend of religion and virtue, should not pass uncontradicted.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lancelot St Albyn Print: Newspaper

James Macpherson : [Ossian poems]

'Johnson thought the poems published as translations from Ossian had so little merit, that he said, 'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would [italics]abandon [end italics] his mind to it'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

William Chambers : Designs of Chinese buildings, furniture, dresses, machines, and utensils : to which is annexed a description of their temples, houses, gardens, &c

'Sir William Chambers, that great Architect, whose works shew a sublimity of genius, and who is esteemed by all who know him for his social, hospitable, and generous qualities, submitted the manuscript of his "Chinese Architecture" to Dr. Johnson's perusal. Johnson was much pleased with it, and said, "It wants no addition nor correction, but a few lines of introduction"; which he furnished, and Sir William adopted'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Manuscript: Unknown

William Savery : [letter]

'I read Wm S- letter and thought upon it and religion before I got up, I think of and feel religion at times but I do not understand it always'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Manuscript: Letter

Matthew Lewis : The Monk

'This evening I have been reading a good deal in the "Monk". I don't know whether it hurts the mind or not, it certainly shows the passions in a very fascinating light. I think we are more apt to be impressed with that part than the morality of it. I think it loss of time and ... I should not go on reading it, but yet as I have begun it I think it better to go on.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book

James Boswell : Letter to the People of Scotland on the Present State of the Nation

'[Letter from Johnson to Boswell] 'I have just advanced so far towards recovery as to read a pamphlet; and you may reasonably suppose that the first pamphlet which I read was yours. I am very much of your opinion, and, like you, feel great indignation at the indecency with which the King is every day treated. Your paper contains very considerable knowledge of history and of the constitution, very properly produced and applied. It will certainly raise your character, though perhaps it may not make you a Minister of State.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson

Thomas a Kempis : Imitation of Christ

'Johnson was very quiescent to-day [17th May 1784] . Perhaps too I was indolent. I find nothing more of him in my notes, but that when I mentioned that I had seen in the King's library sixty-three editions of my favourite "Thomas a Kempis", amongst which it was in eight languages, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Arabick, and Armenian, he said, he thought it unnecessary to collect many editions of a book, which were all the same, except as to the paper and print; he would have the original, and all the translations, and all the editions which had any variations in the text'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell 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

Samuel Johnson : The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

'I have this day read Rasselas which is a book I like as it leads to deep affection'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney Print: Book

William Jones : A course of lectures on the figurative language of the Holy Scripture, and the interpretation of it from Scripture itself

'wrote a little logic this afternoon and read Jones on the Figurative languages of the Scriptures'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Gurney 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

Thomas Clarkson : History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade

'[letter to Dr S.] I have just finished the perusal of a publication which plainly shows what may be accomplished by the persevering exertions of a righteous zeal. I allude to Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade", which I think one of the most interesting books I have ever read'.

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

Samuel Johnson : [MS Autobiography]

'Two very valuable articles, I am sure, we have lost [when Johnson, dying, burnt many of his papers] , which were two quarto volumes, containing a full, fair, and most particular account of his own life, from his earliest recollection. I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them, I had read a great deal in them; and apologizing for the liberty I had taken, asked him if I could help it. He placidly answered, "Why, Sir, I do not think you could have helped it". I said that I had, for once in my life, felt half an inclination to commit theft. It had come into my mind to carry off those two volumes, and never see him more. Upon my inquiring how this would have affected him, "Sir, (said he,) I believe I should have gone mad".'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Manuscript: quarto volumes

Moses Franks : [verses on Mrs Pitt bathing]

'Some body shewed my Mother the Verses written by Moses Franks upon Mrs Pitt bathing at Brighthelmstone - These says She were written by Moses [italics] uninspired [end italics]'.

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Maria Salusbury

Dominique Bouhours : La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit

'[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 sopun into Length. Vide Anthol: Lib: 7.2 & there is some account of it too in Bouhours'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

James Harris : Philosophical Arrangements

'Doctor Burney said prettily of James Harris's Book that it was the pourquoi de Pourquoi'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Burney 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]

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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

Soame Jennings : Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil

'[a young man] Mr Allen - resolved to take Orders and made proper Application: The Bishop asked him of course what he had read. why but little replied he to be sure, for says he I had not absolutely determined on my profession till lately, but an Opportunity happening &c. well Sir cries the Bishop what [italics] have [end italics] you read? why my Lord returns the Youth, I have read Mr Soame Jennings's Book, that I have - [italics] quite through [end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mr Allen 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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Marginalia and marginal lines. Includes dates and places of reading by George Otto Trevelyan: v.2: Oct 7 1891; v.3: Glasgow Oct 15 1891; v.4: Milan Oct 24 1891; v.5 Rome Oct 30 1891; vol.7: "On our homeward journey from Rome Dec. 2 1891".

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Otto Trevelyan Print: Book

Samuel Rogers :

From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'Rogers used often to read to him passages of his writings, and to consult him about the notes to his Italy. "He liked me," Tennyson said, "and thought that perhaps I might be the coming poet, and might help to hand his name down to future ages."'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Rogers

Tom Hughes : Alfred the Great

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.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Tennyson Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Diary

From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1870: 'Nov. 8th. [...] A. read me Pepys' Diary [...] We read about starlings in Morris; I did not know (what A. had put into his Idyll ["The Last Tournament"] by his own observation) that the starlings in June, after they have brought up their young ones, congregate in flocks in a reedy place for the sake of sociability.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'June 22nd. Farringford. Every night A. has read Shakespeare, or Pascal, or Montesquieu (Decadence des Romains).'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : 'Timasetheos' in The Cornhill Magazine

'Your last poem in the Cornhill was first class.'

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

Edmund Gosse : English Odes

'I have just been reading your Odes; a lovely little book.'

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

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'[James Mathias was on summer vacation and] when he came back my Father asked him what Books he had read - I read says he a strange Account of a Beast which however is dead, & I believe there are no more of them in England, it was a horrible one though with a long Tail, & was of the Serpent kind I think; he eat people up and [italics] churned [end italics] them into [italics] Gobbets [end italics] the Book says, - what the Devil Beast could this be says my Father? what was its name Jemmy? The [italics] Blatant Beast [end italics]. as I remember replied Mathias - he had been reading Spenser's Fairy Queen'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Mathias Print: Book

Camille Debans : Le Baron Jean (Baron John)

'Debans, the Dead Man's Shoes fellow has also disgraced himself in a work entitled Baron John.'

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

Thomas Hobbes : The Leviathan

'In "The Leviathan" of Thomas Hobbes, one of the seventeenth-century philosophers whom we had studied in our classes on Political Science, she found for her quotation page a passage which exactly fitted the theme:'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Richard II

'During our Oxford years the works to which she turned most frequently were Shakepeare's "Richard II", Raleigh's "Discovery of Guiana", Milton's "Areopagitica", the writings of John Wyclif, Blake's "Minor Prophecies", and the plays of Bernard Shaw.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

'He [Johnson] was just nine Years old when having got the play of Hamlet to read in his Father's Kitchen, he read on very qu[i]etly till he came to the Ghost scene, when he hurried up to the Shop Door that he might see folks about him'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [verses printed in the Gentleman's Magazine]

'one Day in the Year 1768 I saw some Verses with his name in a Magazine these are they [the poem follows] I thought they were not his so I asked him; A young fellow replied he about forty Years ago, had a Sprig of Myrtle given him by a Girl he courted, and asked me to write him some Verses upon it - I promised but forgot; & when the Lad came a Week after for them, I said I'll go fetch them so ran away for five Minutes, & wrote the nonsense you are so troubled about; & which these Blockheads are printing now so pompously with their L.L.:D'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Serial / periodical

William Mason :

'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

Samuel Richardson :

'To Richardson as a Writer he gave the highest Praises, but mentioning his unquenchable Thirst after Applause That Man said he could not be content to sail gently down the Stream of Fame unless the Foam was continually dashing in his Face, that he might taste it at Every Stroke of the Oar'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

William Mason :

'He had however no Taste for Modern Poetry - Gray Mason &c - Modern Poetry says he one day at our house, is like Modern Gardening, every thing now is raised by a hot bed; every thing therefore is forced, & everything tasteless'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Adam Ferguson : Essay on the History of Civil Society

'Rose [in a debate about the relative worth of Scottish and English writers] to make sure of the Victory - named Ferguson on Civil Society: I do not says Johnson perceive the Value of [italics] this new [end italics] Manner, it is only, like Buckinger, who had no hands - & so wrote with his Toes. - Doctor Delap praised Swift's Style; Mr Johnson was not in the humour to subscribe to its Excellence; the Doctor was beat from one of Swift's Performances to another - but says he you must allow that there are [italics] strong Facts [end italics] in the Account of the four last Years of Queen Anne; Yes sure Sir returns Mr Johnson and so there are in the ordinary of Newgates Account'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Adam Ferguson : Essay on the History of Civil Society

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Rose Print: Book

Edmund Elys : Inconstancy

Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Edmund Elys, 'Inconstancy'.

Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'that Piety which dictated the serious Papers in the Rambler will be for ever remembred [sic], for ever I think - revered. That ample Repository of religious Truth, moral Wisdom & accurate Criticism breathes indeed the genuine Emanations of its Author's Mind; express'd too in a Style so natural to him, & so much like his common Mode of conversing, that I was myself not much astonished when he told me, that he had scarcely read over one of thesed inimitable Essays before they were sent to the Press'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Serial / periodical

Edmund Elys : Peccatum Redivivum: Or, The Rebellion of a Conquer'd Lust

Transcribed in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand, Edmund Elys, 'Peccatum Redivivum: Or, The Rebellion of a Conquer'd Lust'.

Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book

James Harris : [Dedication in] Hermes: or, a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar

'of James Harris Dedication to his Hermes he said that tho' but 14 Lines long, there were 6 Grammatical faults in it'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [translation of lines from Metastasio's 'Adriano']

'Another favourite Passage too in the same Author [Metastasio's Adriano]; which Baretti made his Pupil - my eldest Daughter get by heart - Johnson translated into Blank Verse - [italics] sur le Champ [end italics]: Baretti wrote it down from his Lips, and I write it now from Baretti's Copy, which is almost worne out with lying by in the folds'. [the verses are given in Italian and English]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown

William Jones : [MS Ode on St Cecilia's Day]

'Mr Seward has just brought me a very great Curiosity a Copy of English Verses written by Jones the Orientalist when only 13 Years old. Both the Authour & his Friend swear to their Authenticity or I would not take the Trouble to transcribe them here - it is an Ode in honour of St Caecilia's day Descriptive of the Effects of Musick'. [the poem is given]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Richardson :

'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

Samuel Johnson : Irene: A Historical 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

Samuel Richardson :

'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, 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

Adam Olearius : Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederic, Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of 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

William Alabaster : Verses upon Dr Reynolds & his Brother

Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of William Alabaster, 'Dr Alabasters verses upon Dr Reynolds & his Brother'.

Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book

William Scroggs : Speech by Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs at his impeachment in 1680-1

Transcription in Elizabeth Lyttelton's hand of extracts from a speech by Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs at his impeachment in 1680-1.

Century: 1600-1699 / 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Lyttelton Print: Book

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

James Thomson : Seasons, The - 'Spring'

'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

James Thomson : Seasons, The - 'Summer'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Irene: A Historical Tragedy

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

Thomas Southern : Fatal marriage, The; or, the innocent adultery

'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

Samuel Johnson : Irene: a Historical Tragedy

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

William Mason : 'Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers'

'There was a very pleasant Copy of Verses ran about the Town that Year [1776], but I forgot to lay them up, & now I have lost Sight of them: they celebrated Mr Rudd's Fame very comically, & ended with a Parody upon Young's Tag to the 4th Act of the Revenge.[some of the parody is given] I have a Notion these Verses were written by Mason, who would not to be sure think it worth while to own them; his being found out to be the Authour of the heroick Epistle shews he has under that appearance of Coldness - a large portion of Fire and pungent Satire'

Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown

William Shakespeare : Pericles (Act V)

From Hallam Tennyson's survey of his father's 'Criticisms on Poets and Poetry': 'After reading Pericles, Act v. aloud: '"That is glorious Shakespeare: most of the rest of the play is poor, and not by Shakespeare, but in that act the conception of Marina's character is exquisite."'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Recluse

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

Benjamin Disraeli : Henrietta Temple

'He [Tennyson] read many novels after his evening's work, and among others he looked through Henrietta Temple again. He had told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love was given perfectly there. Lothair he did not admire, "altho' it was written to stir up the English gentry and nobility to be leaders of the people."'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Lothair

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book

Miss Lawless :

'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

William Watson : 'Wordsworth's Grave'

'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.'

Unknown

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

William Whiston : Astronomical Year, The: Or an Account of the Great Year MDCCXXXVI. Particularly of the Late Comet, Which was foretold by Sir Isaac Newton

'There is no Reading that so changes the Scene upon one, and carries one so completely out of one's self I think, as Astronomical Speculation: unless indeed the Study of the Ancient prophecies and modern Calculations of this World's final Dissolution: when we read Burnet on the Conflagration, or Whiston on the expected Comet, how little seem to Common Objects of our Care!'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : [burlesque translation of Euripides in the manner of Potter]

'1: August 1779.] Johnson has been diverting himself with imitating Potter's Aeschylus in a translation of some verses of Euripides - he has translated them seriously besides, & given them to Burney for his history of Musick. here are the Burlesque ones - but they are a [italics] Caricatura [end italics] of Potter whose Verses are obscure enough too. [the verses are given] Poor Potter! he does write strange unintelligible Verses to be sure, but I think none as bad as these neither'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown

Samuel Johnson : Rambler, The

'What a fine Book is "Law's Serious Call"! written with such force of Thinking, such purity of Style, & such penetration into human Nature; the Characters too so neatly, nay so highly finished: yet nobody reads it I think, from the Notion of its being a Religious work most probably. Johnson has however studied it hard I am sure, & many of the Ramblers apparently took their Rise from that little Volume, as the Nile flows majestically from a Source dificult to be discovered or even discerned.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson :

'such is my Tenderness for Johnson, when he is out of my Sight I always keep his Books about me, which I never think of reading at any other Time: but they remind me of [italics] him [end italics], & please me more than even his Letters; for in [italics] them [end italics] he is often scrupulous of opening his heart & has an Idea they will be seen sometime, perhaps published'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Lives of the Poets

'Johnson's newly written Lives are delightful, but he is too hard on Prior's Alma: he will be keenly reproached for his Toryism, but what cares he? he calls himself a Tory, & glories in it. he should have been more sparing of Praise to the Fair Penitent I think, because the Characters are from Massinger - I care not how much good is said of the language; but Old Phil: has the Merit of that Contrast, more happy perhaps than any on our Stage, of the Gay Rake, and the virtuous dependent Gentleman'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: proof sheets

Samuel Joseph Sorbiere : Sorberiana

'Man's Life being divided into five Acts like a Play - in the Sorberiana - what an Affinity it has to Shakespear's seven Ages of Man!'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

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

Samuel Johnson : [prose works]

'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

William Shakespeare : Henry V

'I was reading Congreve's Way of the World two Evenings ago, the character of Petulant is borrowed from Shakespear's Nym in Henry V: and the Expressions are in no few Passages literally copied. [italics] neither [end italics] Character strikes me much, Nym is so little known, he might safely be pilfer'd, but it seems not worth the while.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

Dominique Bouhours : La maniere de bien penser dans les ouvrages d'esprit. Dialogues.

'as I looked in the Glass this Morning & kept Bouhours Maniere de bien penser in my Hand - like Swift's Vanessa Who we know - held Montagne and read- While Mrs Susan comb's her Head. I thought of the following enigmatical Verses: those which gave rise to them both in French & in Italian, may be found in the above mentioned little Volume' her verses are given]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book

William Harrison : 'The Medicine, A Tale - for the Ladies'

'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: Serial / periodical

Samuel Johnson : [a story]

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Serial / periodical

'There is nothing in nature that you may not get a quotation out of Wordsworth to suit, and a quotation too that breathes the very soul of poetry. There are only three books in the world that are worth the opening in search of mottos and quotations, and all of them are alike rich. These are, the Old Testament, Shakspeare, and the poetical works of Wordsworth, and, strange to say, the "Excursion" abounds most in them'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Excursion, The

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Taming of the Shrew

'When we were tired of singing we went into the house & did some Shakespearian Readings. Harry & I read the Grave-diggers. Harry read the Gravediggers very well. Afterwards Polly & I did Pericles & Catherine in "The Taming of the Shrew" this amused us very well & brought on ten o'clock, then Polly & I had our toddy & then I got in real life a lesson of how absurd the Play was we had been reading & how false it was to nature for my Katherina gave me a lecture & shut me up in very quick time.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Castieau family Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Castieau family Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

'Mamma, Harry & myself read a scene or two from Shakspeare (sic). Harry was particularly delighted with the Witches Chorus in Macbeth & would insist upon his audience encoring him in it. To please him we duly went over it with him again. Polly, Harry & I then read the Trial Scene in Othello, Polly taking Desdemona & Harry Brabantio, leaving Othello for your humble servant.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Castieau family Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Castieau family Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'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

William Shakespeare : [unknown]

'When I came home I found Charley Gee engaged with our youngsters singing comic songs & making himself otherwise entertaining, the children enjoyed his company very much before he went away he joined Harry & myself in some Shakesperian (sic) Readings'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley and Harry Castieau Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Othello

'[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

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Ward 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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Robert Southey to Thomas Phillips Lamb, c. 26 September 1792: 'I have been attempting Euclid but without a master I could make no progress — perhaps disgust at the dry study contributed but I did not want perseverance — my brain was so confused with parallels horizontals triangles parallellograms & all the jargon of mathematical precision that after a fortnights hard study I fairly laid it on the shelf & took up my constant study Spenser.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : London

Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 December 1792: 'Juvenal is a grand nervous Satirist — your refined criticks prefer the sneering strokes of Horace — for me I think otherwise — Johnsons London & Vanity of Human Wishes are two of the noblest compositions in our language — the satire of the first is already become obsolete & some centuries hence posterity will believe the supple French Fop only a creation of some drunken Englishmans brain. the last will retain its original beauty even if 1600 years hence some future Bard should imitate Johnson in some future language.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Vanity of Human Wishes

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

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Print: Book

Mark Pattison : 'Confession of Faith'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward Manuscript: Unknown

William Gladstone : Gleanings Of Past Years

'[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 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

William Huskisson : 'The Question Concerning the Depreciation of our Currency Stated and Examined'

Spencer Perceval to John Wilson Croker, 11 November 1810: 'I thank you for the sight of H[uskisson]'s pamphlet. I have run through it, I cannot say [italics]read[end italics] it, for it requires much more [italics]reading[end italics] than I have had time yet to give it. It is in many parts very able -- in all very specious; in many, however, I presume to think very fallacious, and particularly unfair in keeping out of sight so much as it does the circumstance of interrupted commercial intercourse with the Continent, which in my opinion is sufficient, together with the causes which he mentions, to account for almost all these symptoms and phenomena which he ascribes solely to the supposed excess in our paper circulation [comments further].'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Spencer Perceval

William Perkins : [unknown]

'then reed a whill of perkins, and so went to bed'

Century: 1500-1599 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book

Camille Desmoulins : journal

From John Wilson Croker's Note Books, 24 October 1825: 'The first time I ever saw [Germaine de Stael] was at dinner at Lord Liverpool's in Combe Wood [...] During dinner she talked incessantly but admirably, but several of her apparently spontaneous mots were borrowed or prepared. For instance, speaking of the relative states of England and the Continent at that period, the high notion we had formed of the danger to the world from Buonaparte's despotism, and the high opinion the Continent had formed of the riches, strength and spirit of England; she insisted that these opinions were both just, and added with an elegant elan, "Les etrangers sont la posterite contemporaine." This expression I have since found in the journal of Camille Desmoulins.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker

M.L. Molesworth : Cuckoo Clock, The

'[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'.

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson

John Wilson Croker to Lord Brougham (1850-51): 'And so you are reading my Bozzy'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Brougham Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : 'Buckinghamshire speeches'

John Wilson Croker to Lord Brougham, 22 February 1853: 'I fear that the Government of the country is likely to become from such a strange mixture of things [described earlier in letter, about Lord John Russell's leadership of House of Commons] at once odious and ridiculous [...] I despair, and have done so ever since I read Disraeli's Buckinghamshire speeches.'

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker

Benjamin Disraeli : Coningsby

Lord Lyndhurst to Lord Strangford [1854]: 'I never hear Disraeli speak in any way unfriendly of [John Wilson] Croker, and was very much surprised and annoyed when I read "Coningsby," and was told that one of the characters was meant to represent him. Disraeli never spoke to me upon the subject. 'I think the biography [of Disraeli] is a very blackguard publication, and written in a very blackguard style. I don't know who Mr. Vernon-Harcourt is, though I read last year a pamphlet written by him, attacking Lord Derby somewhat in a similar manner, but with more scanty materials.'

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord Lyndhurst Print: Book

William Perkins : A warning against the idolatrie of the last times

'hard Mr Rhodes read of Mr perkins new booke'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book

William Perkins : A warning against the idolatrie of the last times

'after, I hard Mr Rhodes read of perkin'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Richard Rhodes Print: Book

William Perkins : [unknown]

'After priuat prairs I reed of Mr perkins, and after went to the church'

Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Hoby Print: Book

H.M. Tomlinson : The Estuary

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.

Adam Smith : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (September 1818): 'Rose at 7 [...] Sat reading Smith's "Wealth of Nations" until 8.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book

Adam Smith : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, volume 2 chapter 1

From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818): 'Rose at 8. Read once again the "Dissertation on Virtue" which is subjoined to Butler's "Analogy" with very great pleasure [...] After breakfast I opened the second volume of the "Wealth of Nations" and read the first chapter on the employment and accumulation of capital stock. With the exception of a few points, chiefly I believe of phraseology, I agree with him in all he says.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book

Adam Smith : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

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

Adam Smith : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

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

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

William Shakespeare : Tempest, The

'The programme included [...] a Shakespearean reading in the garden from the Tempest in which many members and some visitors took part'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club, and guests Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Tempest, The

'F.J. Edminson read an able and interesting paper on "The Tempest".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick J. Edminson Print: Book

Matthew ("Monk") Lewis : The Monk

Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: 'I have now read the Monk — & admire the delicacy of Lewis in criticising the Bible. there is genius in the book — but no good can possibly be produced by it. I would not have men distrust themselves...'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

H.M. Wallis : [paper on 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 Stansfield Print: Unknown

William Lisle Bowles : Hope, An Allegorical Sketch on Recovering Slowly from Sickness

Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 16 January 1797: 'I begin to think that our opinions upon poetry are not consonant. I am no friend to the harmony with which we have been cloyed since the days of Pope. Churchill is too rough: but there is a medium, & I am on the side of Bowles versus Reviewers: who by the by are in general a set of stupid fellows.'

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

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

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

Thomas James Mathias : The Pursuits of Literature, or What You Will. A Satirical Poem in Dialogue. With Notes. Part the Second

Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 9 August 1797: 'I have only seen the former parts of the Pursuits of Literature. the author appeared to me to have the malevolence of Gifford without his wit. the lines on Darwin were however uncommonly good. if he has wiped me with civility he will serve the book, & the advertisement makes amends for the censure.'

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

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

William Wordsworth : The Borderers

Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 22 September 1797: '...but there is a man, whose name is not known in the world — Wordsworth — who has written great part of a tragedy, upon a very strange & unpleasant subject — but [MS obscured] is equal to any dramatic pieces, [MS obscured] I have ever seen.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Unknown

William Shakespeare : [history plays, particularly Henry VI, Parts I and II]

Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 September 1797: '... this took a strange turn when I was about nine years old. I had been reading the historical plays of Shakespere — concluded that there must be civil war in my own time & resolved to be a very great man, like the Earl of Warwick.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo : De Claris Mulieribus

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 death — & that he has given me matter for a noble speech in Book 3. (I write in the spirit of prophecy for its nobleness.) by saying that her first vision was in a ruined church, where the weather drove her to pass the night with her flock. there are more treasures in this library — & I go there again on Monday next.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'Mr Edminson then made some interesting remarks on the subject of Shakespeare's [??] 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: Helen Rawlings Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Hamlet

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Taming of the Shrew, The

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: T.T. Cass Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Taming of the Shrew, The

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Cass Print: Book

Wilhelm Stekel : Peculiarities of Behaviour

'I am reading "Peculiarities of Behaviour" by Wilhelm Stekel. It is curious how these psychoanalysts boil everything down to food urge or sex urge.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Kitching Print: Book

William Shakespeare : [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

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

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

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. 'In the following lines, by that pious and most excellent of men, Dr Johnson, we are consoled with the assurance that happiness may be attained if we "apply our hearts" to piety' Transcribes poem beginning "Where then shall hope and fear their object find? / Shall dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?..." and ends '1749- aged 40.'

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

William Shakespeare : Much Ado About Nothing

'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: Maria Neild Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Edminson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry V

'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: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book

William 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 Print: Book

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

Thomas Hobbes :

Sir William Molesworth to Harriet Grote, September 1838, regarding his planned edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: 'I have written this day to Mr. Grote, to ask permission to dedicate the volumes to him [...] I shall ever feel the deepest gratitude for the philosophical instruction he gave me when I first knew him, which induced me to study Hobbes and similar authors, and created a taste in my mind for that style of reading.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Molesworth Print: Book

William Morris : Earthly Paradise

'The consideration of the Life & work of Wm Morris was opened by the reading of a short account of the Life by Mrs Goadby in which his many activities were passed in review. After some comments Mrs Edminson read the opening verses to the Earthly Paradise the idle singer of an empty day. Miss Goadby followed with an excellent paper entitled "Some Illustrations of Wm Morris's love of nature" which showed a wide knowledge and keen appreciation of the author's works both in prose & verse. After some appreciative remarks Mrs Ridges read a paper on Wm Morris & Socialism in which it was pointed out that the socialism was the direct & logical outcome of his artistic attitude. [this argument is summarised] Some discussion folowed & was hardly concluded at ten o clock when the Chairman called upon A. Rawlings for some remarks on the art of Wm Morris. In two or three minutes a very incomplete statement of Morris's methods & aims was made & a very pleasant evening was brought to a close'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book

William Morris : [political works]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Blanche Ridges Print: Book

William Morris : [poetry and prose]

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

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

William Shakespeare : Cymbeline

'Byron's example has formed a sort of Upper House of poetry. There is Lord Leveson Gower a very clever young man. Lord Porchester too, nephew to Mrs Scott of Harden, a young man who lies on the carpet and looks poetical and dandyish - fine lad too - But There be many peers Ere such another Byron.' (footnote - An allusion to Cymbeline)

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott

William Smith : Article on George Grote's History of Greece

'In the course of the summer of this year [1856] an article appeared in the pages of the "Quarterly Review," upon Mr. Grote's "History of Greece," taken collectively as a complete work. 'Among the numerous tributes which flowed in upon the author after the publication of the final volume, I recollect his being unusually impressed by the perusal of this paper in the "Quarterly." Not only at the time, but on repeated occasions, would he avow the lively satisfaction he had derived from perceiving how thoroughly his views and arguments had been understood.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Serial / periodical

William Soutar : The Solitary Way

'Copies of "The Solitary Way" came along: looks quite nice. Looking at this handful of lyrics of unequal quality, one is tempted to question if they are worth all the bother of a publication. Yet a glimpse of life may be reflected here and there which might have been unrecorded by any other intelligence.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book

William Soutar : journal

'Reading over the adjoining note, on Gibbon's death, today, leaves me with a sense of inhumanity.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Codex

William Soutar : Brief Words

'Advance copy of "Brief Words" came along; looks very well - scarcely anything that could be improved upon - excepting the actual contents. I can understand something of a woman's feelings on seeing her child.'

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

Tom Scott : On my 21st Birthday

'Tom Scott came in, bringing a typed copy of his lengthy poem, "On my 21st Birthday". Much of this modern verse is unintelligible to me - and, naturally, much of this particular sample of it is too intimate in incident for general understanding. Scott also brought a couple of poems by his pal George Fraser. There is a ninetyish quality about the verse of these young moderns - but with a difference; the self-conscious daring is not in the carnality but in the technique: this gives their poetry a hardness which cuts through sentimentality but also shears away something of humankindness.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Manuscript: Sheet

William Shakespeare : Richard III

'I should be sorry the saying were verified in him So wise and young they say never live long.'

Madame de Sevigne : Letters

Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 19 November 1803: 'I have only read 2 of Belsham's lives; Charles the second and James the second. Charles the first I feel pretty well acquainted with, from our old friend Clarendon. I do not mean to go on with Belsham till I have finished Madame de Sevigne's letters, one volume of which I have read. It is a great undertaking to read them through, but they are so very delightful, and I have so much time for reading here, that I do not find it at all too tedious. I do think her letters and her sentiments quite incomparable, and the endless variety of anecdote and wit, assure their never tiring or boring [...] In the evening we all read and oh! the pleasures of Ignorance. Madame de Sevigne's is to me more entertaining and to my shame I confess, much more [italics]new[end italics], than any novel I could read.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book

Madame de Sevigne : Letters

Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 19 November 1803 ('Friday evening'): 'I just this moment found these lines in one of Madame de Sevigne's letters: "Il faut avouer que nous sommes a une belle distance l'une de l'autre, et que si l'on avoit quelquechose sur le coeur, dont on attendit du soulagement, on auroit un beau loisir de se pendre." The tedious six days before it is possible that I should receive your answer to my last letter are indeed enough to tempt one to some tragical end, and I know not how I shall go through them with patience.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book

Madame de Sevigne : Letters (vol. 5)

Lady Harriet Cavendish to her former governess, Selina Trimmer, 24 November 1803: 'I lament the reason I am going to give you for keeping to one book at a time. I find from the long habits of inattention and unsteadiness of reading to which I have accustomed myself that I cannot remember or connect what I am about as well if I vary the subject, as when I keep steadily to one, and in fact, I gain as much information from constantly having my book [italics]near[end italics] or [italics]about[end italics] me, I get on very fast [sic]. I am now in the 5th volume of Madame de Sevigne's letters, and I own myself to be quite captivated by her style, wit and variety of sentiment. I think people are much mistaken who only dip into this book, as it is impossible to do her, or one's own judgement of her, justice without reading it through with attention and I am sure then with delight.'

Century: 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

Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote

'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

Edmund Spenser : 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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

'Read the Clementina part of "Sir Charles Grandison". I have never met with anything which affected me so powerfully; at present I feel disposed to place this work above all other works of fiction I know. It is very, very grand, and has, I think, a greater practical effect on me for good than anything I ever read in my life.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Wordsworth : Complete Works

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

William Shakespeare : King John

'Read "King John" completely for the first time; I like the historical plays myself better than the pet ones. "Midsummer Night's Dream" I like least of any in Shakespeare. I think the death scene in "King John" one of the very finest things in Shakespeare; but Constance talks too much Billingsgate.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene, The

'Read a little "Faery Queene" also, but it is heavy, though with sweet lines occasionally.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

Edmund Spenser [?] : [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

William Spencer : Latin epitaph on Mr Sargent

Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 28 November 1807: 'I attribute my cold to going to Jermyn Street [grandmother's London residence] last night in a thick fog. 'I found Mr. Spencer and Mr. Preedy there. William Spencer just come to town in a violent hurry as he says he is going to have a share in Drury Lane [...] He was brilliant with rouge and spirits, but must have been rather disappointed in his audience's behaviour. I did nothing but blow my nose and wink my eyes; Mr. Preedy had one of his lethargic fits upon him and never had his open for a minute and my grandmother [the Dowager Countess Spencer] was nodding the whole evening in a comfortable nap. He repeated to us however (just as if we had been awake) quantities of his own poetry, of which, by the bye, he is going to publish a small volume, his bookseller having offered him two hundred pound for it, and read us a Latin epitaph he has just written upon the death of poor Mr. Sargent and contrived to introduce in the course of the conversation, all the compliments that have ever been paid him, de part a l'autre for the last twelvemonth.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Spencer Manuscript: Unknown

James Thompson : The Castle of Indolence

Lady Harriet Cavendish to her grandmother, the Countess Dowager Spencer, 7 November 1808: 'I am glad that I mentioned the Castle of Indolence to you, as I am sure you will be pleased with it. There are descriptions of the Aeolian and British Harp, one of the Musick of Indolence and the other of Industry, and an address to Dreams, that I think beautiful poetry and 3 verses beginning "It was not by vile loitering in ease," that I beg you to admire. Lady Stafford pointed these last out to me, and, in this instance, I admire her taste and agree with her.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Harriet Cavendish Print: Book

James Thompson : The Castle of Indolence

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Stafford Print: Book

William Bell Scott : [memoir David Scott]

'Glanced today through the life and diary of David Scott, a Scotch painter: a poor bravura creature, one of the Greek worshippers: himself a mere bad imitation of the Germans, throwing heaps of muscles together and calling them men, and thinking a mass of vernicular attitudes composition.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Wordsworth : The Excursion

'Take Wordsworth's lines, page 189, of Saturn and his system, for type of his wide, thoughtful, as opposed to Tennyson's acute and passionate wisdom. (Examine passage I, p. 194, for Greek character.)'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part I

'Finished "Henry the Fourth", 1st part.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Midsummer Night's Dream

'"Midsummer Night's Dream" in evening'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

John James Ruskin : diary

'Looking back to my Father's diary - of which I have just 40 pages, which I shall page forthwith (and then dates of painters!) - I open it at 39. i. about Bp Bossuet's work; and intending to read Ezek. XXXIX again, read XXXVI instead.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Manuscript: Codex

John James Ruskin : diary

'Read my Father's note of flowers at Chartreuse. 21.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Manuscript: Codex

John James Ruskin : diary

'Read my Father's note on St George. p. 26'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Manuscript: Codex

William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

'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. I had a kitten & my terrier Mick, (who shiver and stare at each other) & the wireless muttering and playing music ever so distantly.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

From Anne Isabella Milbanke's reminiscences of her father: '"Of Shakespeare, Otway, Dryden, he was a devoted admirer, pointing out or reciting to me their finest passages"'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ralph Milbanke Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Macbeth

Which resolutions with health and my habits of indutry will make me 'Sleep in spite of thunder'.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott 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

Adam Smith : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

'Read Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in evening: the most naive assumption of Nature that ever was'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

M.A. Wallis : [paper on 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 Manuscript: Unknown

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

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'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 Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'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: Florence Reynolds Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'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: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Faerie Queene

'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: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book

William Shakespeare : As you like it

'read, with understanding for the first time in my life, the first scene of "As you like it".'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : novels

'Wilde's fellow pupils remarked on his veneration of the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, so it must have been a fairly unusual literary passion at Portora... Speranza literally passed her passion on to her youngest son by lending him several Disraeli novels. Wilde was ravished by the books...'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book

Thomas a Kempis : The Imitation of Christ

'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

William Rothenstein : Men and Memoirs

I am returning your Memoirs. Technically they have practically no faults, except those of the typist. A few slips here and there. And also one or two places where I think a little cutting might be done. . . . Finally you need have no qualms about the book, either technically of as to its interestingness. As a fact you write a damned sight too skilfully for a painter.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Manuscript: typescript

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

William Wordsworth :

'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

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

'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

William Smith : [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'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Smith Manuscript: Unknown

William [?] Harris : [paper on W.S. 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: William [?] Harris Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

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

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

(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

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

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

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 :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree Print: Book

William Wymark Jacobs :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book

William Wymark Jacobs :

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

M. De Pastoret : Le Duc de Guise a Naples etc. en 1647 et 1648

Wednesday, 8 March 1826: 'Being jaded and sleepy I took up Le Duc de Guise en Naples. I think this, with the old Memoires on the same subject [...] would enable me to make a pretty essay for the Quarterly [Review].'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book

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

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

James Thomson : Ode: Tell me thou Soul of her I love

From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '"Tell me thou Soul of her I love" - Thomson', beginning 'Tell me thou Soul of her I love’.

Unknown

Century: 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….’

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen

M S : What is Love?

From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of "What is Love?” by M. S'.

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen

Samuel Rogers : To the Butterfly

From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of ”To the Butterfly” by Samuel Rogers.

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen

William James : Memories and Studies

'The book has arrived too. It was very kind of you to think of sending it to me. As everything that Professor [William] James ever wrote it's most suggestive and interesting and morally valuable.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV

'An excellent plot, excellent friends, and full of preparations'. Footnote: An allusion to Hotspur's plot in I Henry IV, ii. 3.

Unknown

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott

Benjamin Disraeli : Vivian Grey

Monday, 11 June 1827: 'The attendance on the committee and afterwards the Gnl meeting of the Oil Gas Company took up my morning and the rest dribbled away in correcting proofs and trifling, reading among the rest an odd volume of Vivian Grey -- clever but not so much so as to make [me] in this sultry weather go up stairs to the drawing room to seek the other volumes.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book

James Thomson : Tales of an Antiquary

Friday, 28 March 1828: 'Read Tales of an Antiquary, one of the chime of bells which I have some hand in setting a ringing. He really is entitled to the name of an Antiquary. But he has too much description in proportion to the action. There is a capital wardrope [sic] of properties but the performers do not act up to their character.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book

William Morris : translation of The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

'Morris's Sigurd is a grrrrreat poem; that is so.'

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

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']

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Manuscript: Unknown

John Millington Synge : Tinker's Wedding, The

'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

John Millington Synge : Playboy of the Western World, The

'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

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

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

Miguel de 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: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

'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

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

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

Thomas a Kempis : Imitatio Christi

'When a boy [William Gifford] had read the Bible left to him by his mother, together with her "Imitatio Christi," and a few odd numbers of magazines.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gifford Print: Book

William Barnes : 'What Dick and I did'

'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: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book

William Barnes : 'Sky Man, the'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter S. Rowntree Print: Book

William Barnes : 'Ellen Brine of Allenburn'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence E. Reynolds Print: Book

William Barnes : 'Settle, The'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book

William Morris : Earthly Paradise, The

'C.I. Evans described the Earthly Paradise & Mrs Evans & R.H. Robson gave readings therefrom. H.M. Wallis read [superscript 'recited'] some parts of Sigurd the Volsung & described the extraordinary conditions under which many of the poems were written. Some little discussion upon his poetical works followed but lack of time prevented the reading of further poems'. [the 'crowded' tendency of the meetings is then commented on]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book

William Morris :

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

William Morris : Earthly Paradise, The

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book

William Morris : Earthly Paradise, The

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book

William Morris : Sigurd the Volsung

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis Print: 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

Samuel Rogers : Jacqueline

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

Samuel Rogers : Jacqueline

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Print: 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

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

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Isaac D'Israeli Print: 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

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

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

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

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

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

William Harrison Ainsworth : Boscobel

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Lygon, seventh Earl Beauchamp Print: Book

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra : Don Quixote

'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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady.

'I am reading "Clarissa Harlowe" with all the pleasure in the world…It is the cleverest book in some ways that can be imagined; and deals with so many absorbing problems from different points of view….'

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

Edmund Gosse : Two visits to Denmark

'The rest of the evening was given to Edmund Gosse. H.M. Wallis spoke about Edmund Gosse the man & his work for the public services, & the conflict of personalities as shown in 'Father & Son' & his great interest in the Scandinavian peoples. Miss Marriage gave some very interesting readings from '2 Visits to Denmark' 'The Episode of the Plum Pudding served in a Tureen' & the dear lady who remarked "It brings the dear English nation so near to one". Ed. Gosse has also done great work as a critic - one sentence which fell from H.M.W.in relation to Swinburne. "A drunken monkey who gave utterance to the songs of angels". C.I. Evans spoke upon the Poems. These belong to the period round about 1872 & are frankly of that period & makeup. Perhaps versifying would be the best term to use as they do not quite rank as poetry.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : Father & Son: A Study of Two Temperaments

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

Edmund Gosse : [literary criticism]

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

Edmund Gosse : [poetry]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book

Edmund Gosse : [poetry]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson

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

William Shakespeare : Winter's Tale, The

'The rest of the evening was devoted to a reading of 'The Winter's Tale'. The production was under the joint management of Mrs Robson & R.B. Graham. The play had been 'cut' to bring it within the compass of the time at our disposal and the cast was so arranged that most members took some part. Where all were so good it would be invidious to mention names. Suffice it to say that all felt the evening to have been a good one and the result of the evening was two fold: a new or renewed acquaintance with the genius of Shakespeare and a sense of fellowship induced by the collective contributions of a large number of members'.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of XII Book Club Print: Book

Thomas Sprat : 'To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince, Oliver Lord Protector, &c. Pindarick Ode'

Transcribed in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Extracts from Thomas Sprat's 'To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince, Oliver Lord Protector, &c. Pindarick Ode', in Three Poems Upon the Death of his late Highnesse Oliver Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1659), pp. 11-30.

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

Thomas Sprat : The Plague of Athens

Transcribed in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Extracts from the fifth edition of Thomas Sprat's The Plague of Athens (1688) [p.34] [...] his allegory on the English revolution.

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

Michał Sędziwój : A New Light of Alchymy; Taken out of ye Fountain of Nature & Manual Experi-ence. To which is added a Treatise of Sulphur.

Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Reading notes from the English translation of A New Light of Alchymy (1674) by Michał Sędziwój (Sendivogius).

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

Thomas Wilson : The Arte of Rhetorike, for the vse of all suche as are studious of Eloquence

Included in Reading Notes of Edward Pordage (c.1710): Notes on memory from the fifth edition of Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorike, for the vse of all suche as are studious of Eloquence (1567).

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

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book

William Henry Hudson : Hampshire Days

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ursula Unwin Print: Book

William Henry Hudson : [naturalist writing]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book

William Henry Hudson : [writing on Hampshire villages]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: 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

Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil, or The Two Nations

27 May 1878: 'Up early and off by the 11.30 train [from Fulda] to Berlin. They have a curious plan at Fulda of sounding the reveille at 4 o'clock in the morning [...] I first heard it on the Sunday. I was already awake and reading Disraeli's Sybil, which has interested us [Lady Charlotte and her husband Charles, a Conservative politician] by reason of the political opinions expressed in it. I finished the book today on the way to Berlin.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book

Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil, or The Two Nations

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book

?Benjamin ?Disraeli : Alroy

19 June 1878: 'A really warm day, quite summer at last. I did not go out till after dinner. I have finished Alroy, and am reading Wilhelm Meister.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merry Wives of Windsor

15 October 1879, from Berlin: 'Since dinner I have read the Merry Wives of Windsor with great delight. I have been going through the historical plays of Shakespeare from King John to Henry VIII since I came abroad [in September 1879], and hope to read them more carefully again.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book

William Shakespeare : history plays

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

Benjamin Disraeli : pamphlet [featuring descriptions of Syria and Cyprus]

1 November 1879: 'We left Bruges by an early train, the express, joining the steamer at Ostend, and had a beautiful passage home reading Disraeli's pamphlet, which has given me great pleasure, especially by his descriptions of the scenes [in Syria and Cyprus] that Enid [reader's daughter] had been lately visiting.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber

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

Thomas Stevenson : Christianity Confirmed by Jewish and Heathen Testimony and the Deductions from Physical Science

'I received my father’s pamphlet and read it with great pleasure. I shall try and write of it more at large to himself.'

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Pepys : Diary

'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: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Diary

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Diary

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Diary

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book

Henry Marriage Wallis : [essay on Pepys]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis 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

James Boswell : Life of 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: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

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

Samuel Pepys : Journal

'On the rising of Parliament [on 7 September 1880] the Schreibers were free to go abroad once more. On this occasion they made Cologne their first stopping-place. The evenings there were spent in reading Pepys' Journal.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book

Samuel Pepys : Journal

[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

William Shakespeare :

'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

(Basil) Macdonald Hastings : The Advertisement: A Play in Four Acts

'I read "[The]Advertisement" yesterday only--thrice over. très fort.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: 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

William Shakespeare :

[between Journal entries for 2 January and 28 February 1887] 'Until [Lady Charlotte Schreiber's] eyes were uncovered [following operation on 9 January] Maria [daughter] had acted as her secretary and had read Shakespeare to her.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria [nee Guest] 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

William Shakespeare : plays

[between journal entries for 6 November 1889 and 2 Jun 1890] 'From one till two every day, a Mr. Upton came to read to [Lady Charlotte Schreiber], first the Times and then whatever book was interesting to her at the moment. There was reason to believe that on his way to [No. 17] Cavendish Square Mr. Upton moistened his throat for reading aloud by a visit to a publican in the neighbourhood. A story is told that one day when sitting down to read he lost his balance and fell on the floor. Lady Charlotte rang the bell [...] for her maid, and when she arrived said: "Remove Mr. Upton, Moody, I don't think he is well." In the evening Moody herself was the reader, generally of some memoirs. Her sister, whom Lady Charlotte had helped to become an actress, had just returned from America [...] Moody therefore was now occasionally replaced as a reader by her sister, who read the Shakespeare plays in which she had been acting with Mary Anderson.'

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

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

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]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: members of XII Book Club Print: Book

William Butler Yeats : 'Down by the Salley Gardens'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Celia Burrow Print: Book

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

William Shakespeare :

'The remainder of the evening was devoted to a series of readings & quotations from Shakespeare intended to indicate different aspects of him and these were interspersed with brief informal & sometimes penetrating discussions. We were indebted to E.A. Smith for quotations on public & private life to C.I. and K.S. Evans for a reading from King Lear R.B. Graham gave us a series on Death & after several short items C.E. Stansfield appropriately concluded with Shakespeare's description of a wet Summer in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Midsummer Night's Dream, A

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : King Lear

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles and Katherine Evans Print: Book

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham and Francis Pollard Print: Book

Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Series of Character Sketches

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book

Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Revolution in Tanner's Lane, The

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book

Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Catharine Furze

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book

Mark Rutherford [pseud.] : Mark Rutherford's Deliverance

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Burrow 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

Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book

Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: R.B. Graham Print: Book

Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Marriage Print: Book

Edward Morgan Forster : Passage to India, A

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

Henry Marriage Wallis : Thoughts on the Construction of Cathedrals

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Aaron Hill

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

[?Sarah] Fielding to Samuel Richardson, 6 July 1754: 'Here are a set of young women endued with the most exemplary patience I ever met with; for Miss L---- and Miss B---- agree'd to read Sir Charles Grandison together, and really waited from time to time till they could meet, each honourably performing their covenant, and not so much as taking one unlawful peep in the absence of the other.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: 'Miss L----' and 'Miss B----' Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Margaret Collier to Samuel Richardson, from Ryde, 31 December 1755: 'My good old folks were desirous that I should read Clarissa to them, which gave me a fourth time the pleasure of going through that admirable work; they never read it nor heard of it till now, and are so delighted, and so interested for your beloved sweet girl [i.e. character Clarissa], that you cannot imagine what a new entertainment it is to me to hear the remarks, and the observations they make, and this from minds so innocent and ignorant of the world as they seem.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Collier Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Collier Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Margaret Collier to Samuel Richardson, from Ryde, 11 February 1756: 'My good old folks --you can't think how I love them! -- the more I believe, because they hearken with such attention and admiration to Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, which latter I have now begun to them [sic]. They believe both Clarissa and Sir Charles to be real stories, and no work of imagination, and I don't care to undeceive them. The good man is more than three score, he believes [...] They love each other, and the husband rejoices in the balance of sense being of her side, which it is, in some degree, and glories in her being able to read and write, which he can scarcely do.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Collier Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa (volume 3)

Colley Cibber to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1748 [comments in detail, with page references, on passages in latest instalment of Clarissa, before remarking]: 'I have got through 210 pages [of volume 3] with a continual resolution to give every occasional beauty its laudable remark; but they grow too thick and strong upon me, to give me that agreeable leisure. I read a course of full five hours and a half, without drawing bit (as the jockeys call it); in which time my attention has got the better of my approbation, which all the while longed to tell you how I liked it [goes on to comment further in detail, apparently breaking off and resuming letter to read, and report on, successive passages of text]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Colley Cibber Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Colley Cibber to Samuel Richardson, 6 June 1753, following visit to Richardson on 3 June 1753: 'The delicious meal I made of Miss Byron on Sunday last, has given me an appetite for another slice of her, off from the spit before she is served up to the public table.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Colley Cibber

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Colley Cibber to Samuel Richardson, 27 May 1750: 'I have just finished the sheets [of Clarissa] you favoured me with [...] I have not patience, till I know what's become of her [...] What piteous, d----d, disgraceful, pickle have you plunged her in? For God's sake send me the sequel [...] My girls are all on fire and fright to know what can possibly become of her.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Colley Cibber

Samuel Richardson : 'writings'

J. Duncombe, of Benet College, Cambridge, to Samuel Richardson, 15 October 1751: 'Mr Graham is not in Cambridge; but his brother is, who is [...] very ingenious, and expressed a great desire to be acquainted with you,as he already thoroughly is with your writings [...] The short epigram which Mr Graham sent you was wrote by himself, and is much liked here, because we think it partakes of the sublime simplicity of the ancients.'

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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

J. Channing to Samuel Richardson, 31 October 1748: 'I returned your papers on Saturday, with sincere thanks, myself very truly affected with them. I had attended the last moments of your heroine [Clarissa] with such emotions of soul, as every unsteeled reader must experience.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: J. Channing

Samuel Richardson : 'Rambler' [essay]

Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 4 March 1751: 'You need not make any apologies about my Rambler [No. 100]. I had no idea when I sent it to you that it was worth a second reading [...] Having honestly told you my humility, I will now, with equal honesty, tell you my vanity, that upon the whole it pleases me better than Mr Richardson's Rambler [identified by source ed. as probably No. 97]. Do you like that Paper? and will you be angry with me for not liking it at all? I cannot see how some of his doctrines can be founded on any other supposition than that Providence designed one half of the human species for idiots and slaves. One would think the man was, in this respect, a Mahometan.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Richardson : 'Rambler' [essay]

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, in response to Carter's attack on the perceived misogyny of Richardson's 'Rambler' essay: 'Fie upon you! indeed I see no harm in that poor Paper, and must own myself particularly fond of it. He does not pretend to give a scheme (not an entire scheme) of female education, only to say how when well educated they should behave, in opposition to the racketing life of the Ranelagh-education misses of these our days. Do read it over again a little candidly. How can you imagine that the author of Clarissa has not an idea enough of what women may be, and ought to be?'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Richardson : 'Rambler' [essay]

Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 24 March 1751: 'Well according to your advice I have given Mr Richardson another reading, and confess myself to have been too much prejudiced both by the opinions of those who read it before me, and from some of his own notions which I had lately seen on another subject, and that the Paper itself, if my head had not been full of those when I read it, might have appeared to much greater advantage.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Serial / periodical

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady.

'Please, if you have not, and I don’t suppose you have, already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of books − [italics]Clarissa Harlowe[end italics]. For any man who takes an interest in the problem of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel. Miss Howe and Lovelace, words cannot tell how good they are! And the scene where Clarissa beards her family, with her fan going all the while; and some of the quarrel scenes between her and Lovelace; and the scene where Colonel Marsden goes to Mr Hall, with Lord M. trying to compose matters, and the Colonel with his eternal "finest woman in the world", and the inimitable affirmation of Mowbray − nothing could be better! You will bless me when you read it for this recommendation; but, indeed, I can do nothing but recommend [italics]Clarissa[end italics].'

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

Maximilien de Bethune de Sully : Memoirs

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 August 1751: 'I am still bewitched by the "Memoires de Sully" [...] I know none that shews the world in a more entertaining and instructive way, and numberless are the reflections that every page suggests to me.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 23 December 1751: 'Do you know the Grandison family? [...] Oh, Miss Carter, did you ever call Pigmalion a fool, for making an image and falling in love with it -- and do you know that you and I are two Pigmalionesses? Did not Mr Richardson ask us for some traits of his good man's character? And did not we give him some? And has he not gone and put these and his own charming ideas into a book and formed a Sir Charles Grandison? [...] I have seen some parts of this amiable book, but I tell you this as a profound secret, which I have not named even to Lady Grey, who is therefore much puzzled why we cannot find time to read Amelia, when she knows we read en famille after supper.'

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot

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

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

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, on life at Cuddesdon, 8 September 1753: 'Our days here pass too pleasantly to want any foreign enlivening [...] country scenes, charming weather, agreeable companions, and every evening an hour's reading en famille of Sir C. Grandison.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 21 September 1753: 'Mr Richardson has been so good as to send me four volumes of his most charming work, and I heartily wish, for his sake as well as their own, that all the world may be as fond of it as I am [comments further].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book

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

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

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

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

Molly Elliott Seawell : The Ladies' Battle

'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: Charles Evans Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Preface to Dictionary

[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 13 June 1755:] 'How do you like Mr Johnson's Dictionary? I have only seen part of the Preface, which was like himself. I have just been reading Mr Swift's account of the Dean, a book at which I am greatly scandalized. I do not remember ever to have met with so open and shameful a vindication of that species of idolatry which is the absolute ruin of all virtue, the worship of the world.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book

Samuel Johnson : Dictionary

[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 24 February 1756:] 'We have looked in Johnson [i.e. his Dictionary] for [italics] Athlete [end italics], no such word there, nor any thing of the kind but Athletic, with explanations every body knows.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family 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

M. B Synge : A Book of Discovery

"Mrs C. Elliott reviewed "A Book of Discovery" by N. B. [sic] Synge'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Book

Salomon Gessner : La Mort d'Abel

[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 30 May 1761:] 'To make you amends for all the nonsense which I have collected from all the frippery shelves throughout Westminster and London, I will mention a book which, if you have not read it, it is fit you should, 'La Mort d'Abel.' It is a High Dutch poem translated into French prose. This general account of it, does not, I confess, look very promising, but I think you will be pleased with the book. I believe it may not by any means be conformable to the rules of Epic poetry, but the manner and the sentiments are charming, and to me it was extremely affecting. There are two pastorals in the same volume, by the same author, which pleased me better than almost any thing I have met with of that kind.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book

Salomon Gessner : La Mort d'Abel

[Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 1 August 1761:] 'I am ashamed to say I have not yet sent La Mort d'Abel to Mrs Donnelan; but the truth is, I began reading it to my mother, and cannot find in [sic] my heart to send it away till I have done. It has taught us to be fond of a sweet flowery spot in the garden, which is our reading place, and we impatiently sigh for a quiet hour or two to finish it [...] It is not faultless to be sure, but it seems to me absolutely one of the most charming and instructive things I ever read.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book

(Basil) Macdonald Hastings (and Eden Philpotts) : The Angel in the House

'I have been reading through your plays again. You are "très fait" as the French say. Tell me, had E[den] P[hillpotts] much to do with the "Angel"? It seems to me to be pure Hastings.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: probably an acting edition

William Rothenstein : A Plea for a Wider Use of Artists and Craftsmen

'Thanks for your pamphlet, to which I responded with every feeling and conviction that go to make up my "less perishable" being. And how beautifully all those deeply felt truths are said!'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad

?Thomas Sherlock : Sermons

[Elizabeth Carter to Elizabeth Vesey, 8 December 1773:] 'When I recommended Sherlock's Sermons, I believe I did it with some exception; many, indeed most of them, are very excellent. Most of those in which he defends the general truth of Christianity, and answers the cavils of unbelievers, are writ with a clearness and a spirit which are seldom equalled. But in others he is obscure and confused, and seems either not to have understood himself, or not to have wished to be understood by others. Archbishop Secker's Sermons are absolutely free from these objections, and are, I think, upon the whole the most calculated to awaken the conscience and amend the heart, of any that perhaps were ever published.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book

Thomas Secker : Sermons

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book

Helen Thomas Follett (and Wilson Follett) : Some Modern Novelists: Appreciations and Estimates

'Pray, when you see [Wilson] Follett, give him a warm greeting from me. His little book is one of these things one does not forget. I saw some time ago a study of Galsworthy by him (and a lady who must be either his wife or his sister) which within the limits if a magazine article was simply admirable for insight and expression.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad 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

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 26 January 1749:] 'I find, dear Sir, that if I put off my acknowledgements to the author of the divine Clarissa till I can meet with words that will fully express what I think and feel on that subject, I must for ever seem either insensible or ungrateful [...] Whether it be a milkiness of blood in me, as Shakespeare calls it, I know not, but I have never felt so much distress in my life as I have done for that dear girl [comments further]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : ?The Works of Mr Edmund Spenser

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1751:] 'I never was master of any edition of Spenser but Rowe's, which, upon my first reading it, appeared to be published in a very hasty and careless manner: a very great number of faults I could discover and correct, without comparing with any other edition. Some time since I borrowed the folio of 1609; but it was not till lately that I could get a sight of the first quarto of 1590, which was published in Spenser's lifetime: and I proposed this summer, if I should have life and health, to collate the three together, -- as indeed I have begun to do [discusses this editorial project and related issues further]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 30 March 1751: 'I never was master of any edition of Spenser but Rowe's, which, upon my first reading it, appeared to be published in a very hasty and careless manner: a very great number of faults I could discover and correct, without comparing with any other edition. Some time since I borrowed the folio of 1609; but it was not till lately that I could get a sight of the first quarto of 1590, which was published in Spenser's lifetime: and I proposed this summer, if I should have life and health, to collate the three together, -- as indeed I have begun to do [discusses this editorial project and related issues further]'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Edmund Spenser :

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 8 May 1751:] 'All this while I have been hard at work upon [an edition of] Spenser; but to what purpose except my own private satisfaction? There, however, it will repay me: for every time I read I find new beauties in him; such fine moral sentiments, such height of colouring in his descriptions, such a tenderness when he touches any of the humane passions! -- Were but his language better understood, he must be admired by every one who has a a [italics]heart[end italics].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 31 March 1753:] 'I cannot help mentioning to you, because I know it will give you pleasure, the good fortune that has fallen to one of your pretty disciples in my neighbourhood, who is a great admirer of Clarissa. She is the daughter of a yeoman near me [goes on to tell how the young woman has been married to "a gentleman in possession of a very handsome estate, and who will have a greater"] [...] Her neatness, modesty, and sweetness of temper, often put me in mind of your Pamela in her single state: but when I visited them lately on their marriage, the likeness was extremely striking [...] the same unaffected humility towards those whom she was now raised to a level with, and that sort of awful regard for her benefactor which you so finely paint in that amiable character, were truly exemplified here. The gentleman, like Mr. B., has the majority against him on this occasion; but he is contented rather to be happy than fashionable.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Sir Charles Grandison

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 28 January 1754, on his return home from a stay in London:] 'I have not been a fort'n-night [sic] at home. The contrast between my late situation, happy in the enjoyment of the company of my friends, and my present solitary circumstances, was too strong for me not to want something to compensate the difference. I therefore called Sir Charles Grandison to my assistance; for the conversation I had with him at Ember and in town was so broken and interrupted that it had by no means satisfied my longing. And what was the consequence? Why, just the fable of the horse and the man: he whom I called in for an ally became my master, and made me spend with him every leisure hour I could command, till I had again gone through the five books; and had they been fifteen, I must have done so.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Edmund Spenser : Sonnets

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 18 July 1754, on his practice of writing sonnets:] 'The reading of Spenser's Sonnets was the first occasion of my writing that species of little poems, and my first six were written in the same sort of stanza as all his and Shakespeare's are. But after that Mr Wray brought me acquainted with the Italian authors, who are the originals of that sort of poetry, and whose measures have more variety and harmony in them, -- ever since, I wrote in that stanza; drawing from the same fountain as Milton drew from'.

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Thomas Stevenson :

'I read the preface once a day about, tell Nestor so much.'

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

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

Edmund Gosse : Father and Son:A Study of Two Temperaments

'My warmest thanks for the inscribed copy which arrived yesterday. The first time I read the book was in 1908, the last was in '12 or early '13 when the copy disappeared [...] Directly the little friendly looking vol. was put into my hands yesterday afternoon I read [...] the intro. and the first 15 pages where there are passages for which I have a special affection [...].'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 19 December 1754:] 'Think not that I can be easily satisfied without your company: I have it in those excellent works which do honour to the present age, and are a great alleviation of my solitude [...] Pamela I have lately read, and begun upon Clarissa, and I must still say, the more I read the more I admire.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755:] 'Your works are an inexhaustible fund of entertainment and instruction. I have been this day weeping over the seventh volume of Clarissa, as if I had attended her dying bed, and assisted at her funeral procession. O may my latter end be like hers!'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Pamela

[Sarah Scudamore (nee Westcomb) to Samuel Richardson, 12 March 1758:] 'I've lately read over my oracle (Pamela) again, and already made use of some of Mr Locke's maxims, made clear and plain by her, upon my little boy, which I highly approve, and intend strictly to adhere to.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Scudamore Print: Book

Unknown

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Delany

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa (volumes 1-4)

[From ed. notes:] '[Samuel Richardson's] correspondence with Lady [Dorothy] Bradshaigh began in the following manner: -- A lady, calling herself Belfour, wrote to the author of Clarissa, after reading the first four volumes, acquainting him that a report prevailed, that The History of Clarissa was to end in a most tragical manner, and, expressing her abhorrence of such a catastrophe, begged to be satisfied of the truth by a few lines inserted in the Whitehall Evening Post. -- Mr Richardson complied with her request; in consequence of which many letters passed between them.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa (volume 5)

[Dorothy, Lady Bradshaigh (as 'Mrs Belfour') to Samuel Richardson (letter undated):] 'Just as I was sending this to the post, your fifth volume came to my hand [...] I long to read it -- and yet I dare not. But I have a kind friend who will first look it over [...] [he] is willing to save me pain, though at the expence of suffering it himself. If I find the dreaded horrid act is not perpetrated, I will promise to read it [...] 'O, Sir! I have been prevailed upon to read a part of your story [i.e. Lovelace's drugging and rape of Clarissa], that I thought would have torn my heart in a thousand pieces. You have drawn a villain above nature; and you make that villain a sensible man, with many good qualities, and you have declared him not an unbeliever. Indeed, Sir, I am more out of conceit with your scheme than ever; it must do harm, indeed it must. What will any villain care what becomes of a Clarissa, when he has gained his horrid ends, which you have taught him how to gain [...] it is too shocking and barbarous a story for publication [...] Blot out but one night, and the villainous laudanum, and all may be well again.'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book

Samuel Richardson : Clarissa (final 3 volumes)

[Dorothy, Lady Bradshaigh (as 'Mrs Belfour') to Samuel Richardson, 11 January [1748/9], on completing reading of final three volumes of Clarissa:] 'I have, Sir, with much pain, much greater than you imagine, gone through your inimitable piece [...] It must be acknowledged by every body a noble work [...] 'I once intended to point out, and take notice, as I went along, of what I thought particular beauties, but they came so thick upon me, that I found it would be an endless piece of work [...] Besides, I am conscious I have not strength of judgement for such an undertaking; more especially at present, being every way weakened by reading your most moving relation [discusses responses to text (including copious weeping and disturbed sleep) further].'

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Lady Bradshaigh Print: Book

Thomas Sims : Brief Memorials of Jean Frédéric Oberlin

[Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, on life as a teacher at Miss Wooler's school, Dewsbury Moor, June 1837:] 'My life since I saw you last has passed on as monotonously and unvaryingly as ever, nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, or a call from the Taylors [friends], or by meeting with a pleasant new book. "The Life of Oberlin" and Legh Richmond's "Domestic Portraiture" are the last of this description I have perused. The latter work strongly attracted, and strangely fascinated, my attention. Beg, borrow, or steal it without delay; and read the "Memoir of Wilberforce," that short record of a brief, uneventful life, I shall never forget; it is beautiful, not on account of the incidents it details, but because of the simple narration it gives of the life and death of a young, talented, and sincere Christian. Get the book, Ellen (I wish I had it to give you), read it and tell me what you think of it.'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book

Thomas Hobbes : Leviathan

'They could all, I thought, have been summed up by the glum description of barbarism in the book called "Leviathan" by the seventeenth-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vera Brittain Print: Book

James Kay-Shuttleworth : Proof of a report on Battersea Teacher-Training School

'full of good & useful matter'

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Unknown

Edmund Gosse : Three French Moralists and the Gallantry of France

'Many thanks for the book. I read the sketch of De la R[ochefoucauld] psychology with great delight.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts :

'Your R.A.F. paper is very good [...].'

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad

John William Fortescue : History of the British Army: Extracts from British Campaigns in Flanders

'As to "The Hist[ory] of the British Army" it is "tout bonnement admirable!". No other phrase can do justice to 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

Thomas James Wise : A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Part 1)

'Let me thank you for the Swinburne bibliography which I've read with the greatest interest.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

William Rothenstein : Twenty-Four Portraits, with Critical Appreciation by Various Hands

'Thanks ever so much for the admirable book of portraits. Every one is a revelation-especially of course those of the people one knows, if ever so little.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

Thomas William Lancaster : The harmony of the law and the Gospel with regard to the doctrine of a

[...] Stanley- Gisborne- Shelley- Lancaster: exceedingly desultory & alas exceedingly idle. Did a very few Lat. vss & Greek Iambb.

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book

Thomas William Lancaster : The harmony of the law and the Gospel with regard to the doctrine of a

[Sunday] Chapel & Serm. mg & aft. Whateley. Lancaster. Sleepy. [...].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book

Thomas William Lancaster : The harmony of the law and the Gospel with regard to the doctrine of a

[Sunday] Short's Serm. Heard Buckley. Lancaster &c &C. [...].

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Ewart Gladstone Print: Book

Margaret Isabella Stevenson :

'Your last letter was very nice.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter

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

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

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

Roman Dyboski : ?The Religious Element in Polish National Life

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad

Juliet M. Soskice (Hueffer) : Memoirs from Childhood: Reminiscences of an Artist's Grand-daughter

'I ought to have thanked you before for Mrs Soskice's book. I remember it had a good press when it first appeared. It certainly has a quality but it is very much like the one-time Juliet.'

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

Max Adeler pseud. i.e Charles Heber Clark : Out of the Hurly Burly: or Life in an Odd Corner

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book

William Shakespeare :

'In a mill town in the late 1840's, a group of girl operatives met at five o'clock in the morning to read Shakespeare for an hour before going to work.'

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

Edmond Rostand : Cyrano de Bergerac

'We reached his room about eleven. To do what? Not a blessed thing but to sit before a fire and talk and read again.... On his shelf was ... Edmund Rostand's [italics] Cyrano de Bergerac [end italics] in the original French. I started to read the famous speech on his nose. My good friend went ahead with me line for line without the book. Then he in turn read the "Non merci" speech with immense gusto.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Cyril Lionel Robert James Print: Book

James Shirley : 'Death the Leveller'

'16th. October. Thrown out at Shorncliffe, above Folkestone. Very stormy day with heavy seas running. Informed that the boat would not cross today, so took an exceedingly good lunch. After lunch we were informed that the boat would sail at 2.30 p.m. Left then, tremendous rolling and pitching. Everybody sick. I remember well standing at the rail with a general on my left hand and a major of the R.A.F. on my right, and talking to the deep with them. I felt like quoting "Death the Leveller" to them, substituting "seasickness" for "death". There was some humour in the situation. Boulogne. Put up at the Meurice and went to bed after tea.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Lindsay Mackay Print: Unknown

William Shakespeare : The Two Noble Kinsmen

'F. E. Pollard gave a short introduction to the play of The Two Noble Kinsmen and in the ensuing reading took the part of Arcite Thos C Elliott taking Palamon and Mrs Evans and Miss Brain taking respectively the character of Emilia and her maid.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard

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

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: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part 1 (Act II scene I: the men in buckram)

'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair

Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved

[...]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part 1 (Act II scene I: the men in buckram)

'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair

Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved

[...]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book

William Shakespeare : Henry IV Part 1 (Act II scene I: the men in buckram)

'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair

Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved

[...]

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Burrow Print: Book

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

William Shakespeare : The Taming of the Shrew

Meeting held at Broomfield: 15. V. 31 George Burrow in the chair 1. Minutes of last approved [...] 5. George Burrow read a short paper introducing the Taming of the Shrew and the Club then read this play in parts

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club Print: Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's Schooldays

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 Print: Book

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

Wilhelm Scherer :

'I am reading a short 'Etude' of Scherer on Goethe, in which I so heartily agree that I enjoy it.'

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Emma Darwin Print: Unknown

Samuel Pepys : Diary

'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. [...]

'Le Havre, though undamaged by war, was stark and gloomy to march through ... "We are quite near Agincourt", I wrote dutifully to my old history master at school, feeling as far from the thin skin of my patriotism as I could be. "This quarrel honourable" -- of course we all "did" Henry V -- seemed to be some quirk in Shakespeare rather than anything stable in the English character.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Print: Book

William Watson : [unidentified poetry]

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.

Unknown

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings

Henry Marriage Wallis : [a paper on witchcraft]

Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.

Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.

'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

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

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.

10. Discussion then followed.'

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Alexander Manuscript: Letter

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

J. M. Synge : The Tinker’s Wedding

Meeting held at St. Margaret’s, Shinfield Road: 20. 1. 38.

F. E. Pollard in the chair

1. Minutes of last read and approved

[...]

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.

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis 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

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

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Corder Pettifor Catchpool Print: Book

William Shakespeare : The Merchant of Venice

'It is surprising how irritating it is when simple little questions or arguments arise which none of us can settle because we have no other sources of information than our imagination. [italics] The Merchant of Venice [end italics], which Elsie sent me, has just settled one grevious point, viz. who was in love with Portia. I was a bit hazy over most of the play but I said Bassanio. Hamilton stuck out that Bassanio eventually trotted off with Nerissa. He had got it into his head that although Bassanio and Portia were lovers in the early part of the play, the ring episode upset things and Bassanio married Nerissa. But I was correct and I can now gloat over Hamilton although really I have little right to do so for it was more of a guess than a feat of memory, but I don't admit that to Hamilton.'

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

Listings for Author:

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Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wully Carruthers Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ellen Weeton Print: Book

Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Davies

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret 'Peggy' Turner Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elisabeth or Eliza Duncan

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Dugdale

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Groom

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Thomas Print: Book

Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sophia

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

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

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book

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

Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book

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

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

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

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

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

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

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

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book