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

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Listings for Reader:  

Jack

 

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witness statement in trial for theft: Michael McNally: "Jack brought a newspaper to me, and read a statement that Cooper was apprehended upon this, and he said that Messrs Winchester had offered a large reward, and he told me to keep my tongue quit, and all would be right..."

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John (Jack) Winter      Print: Newspaper

  

 : London Journal

Henry Mayhew interviews a juvenile crossing sweeper: "I can read and write -oh, yes, I mean read and write well -read anything, even old English; and I write pretty fair, -though I don't get much reading now, unless it's a penny paper -I've got one in my pocket now -it's the London Journal -there's a tale in it now about two brothers, and one of them steals the child away and puts another in his place, and then he gets found out, and all that, and he's just falling off a bridge now..."

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

  

Walter Scott : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson... would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

Charles Reade : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson ...would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

George Eliot : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

Charlotte Bronte : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

Emily Bronte : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

Thomas Hardy : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

Victor Hugo : 

'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'

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

  

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

  

 : The Bible

'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

'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

  

Thomas Babington Macaulay : 

'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'

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

  

John Richard Green : 

'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'

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

  

Edward Gibbon : [The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?]

'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'

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

  

John Lothrop Motley : The Rise of the Dutch Republic

'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'

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

  

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

'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

  

Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution

'The historical classics "came as a revelation"- Macaulay, J.R. Green, Gibbon, Motley's Dutch Republic, Prescott on Peru and Mexico and The French Revolution. Academic critics today might discern ideologies in all of the above, but that was not Lawson's reading of them. "Of politics I knew nothing and cared less", he recalled, yet his purely literary readings had helped him form "some very definite opinions on the right and wrong of things social..."'

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

  

Karl Marx : 

'At Ruskin College he was exposed to Marx, but he found a more compelling Utopian prophet when he read Lewis Carroll to his daughters: "Then one could look at life and affairs from the proper angle, for was not all our work to this end - that little children should live in their Wonderland, and mothers and fathers be heartful of the good of life because they were".'

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

  

Lewis Carroll : 

'At Ruskin College he was exposed to Marx, but he found a more compelling Utopian prophet when he read Lewis Carroll to his daughters: "Then one could look at life and affairs from the proper angle, for was not all our work to this end - that little children should live in their Wonderland, and mothers and fathers be heartful of the good of life because they were".'

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

  

James Boswell : Life of Johnson

'Jack Common recalled that his mother brought him a secondhand and severely abridged "Life of Johnson" for 1d., and he had to read it several times before he even partially absorbed it'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Common      Print: Book

  

Jack London : The Iron Heel

'[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

  

 : [council regulations]

'[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      

  

Karl Marx : 

'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley      Print: Book

  

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

  

Jean Jacques Rousseau : 

'[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

  

John Locke : 

'[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

  

Thomas Hill Green : 

'[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

  

Leo Tolstoy : [unknown]

'Once a month when [Jack Jones's] duties took him to Cardiff, he would exchange twelve to twenty books and take them home in an old suitcase. He read Tolstoy and Gork, and raced through most of Dostoevsky in a month. He was guided by a librarian who, like a university tutor, demanded an intelligent critique of everything he read'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Jones      Print: Book

  

Fyodor Dostoevsky : [most works]

'Once a month when [Jack Jones's] duties took him to Cardiff, he would exchange twelve to twenty books and take them home in an old suitcase. He read Tolstoy and Gork, and raced through most of Dostoevsky in a month. He was guided by a librarian who, like a university tutor, demanded an intelligent critique of everything he read'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Jones      Print: Book

  

Maxim Gorky : [unknown]

'Once a month when [Jack Jones's] duties took him to Cardiff, he would exchange twelve to twenty books and take them home in an old suitcase. He read Tolstoy and Gork, and raced through most of Dostoevsky in a month. He was guided by a librarian who, like a university tutor, demanded an intelligent critique of everything he read'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Jones      Print: Book

  

[n/a] : [comic paper]

'One day, however, I made a discovery. I could read myself! I was four years old now... and while sprawling on the floor with a comic open at the pictures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim, or Dreamy Daniel, or Casey Court, or the Mulberry Flatites, I found that the captions under suddenly began to read themselves out to me.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Common      Print: Serial / periodical

  

[n/a] : Bible

[Given 'a handsome and well-illustrated volume called the Prize Bible' by his grandmother] '...the surprise they got when I actually read the thing, right through, cover to cover, as if it was "Chips" or "Herewald the Wake"... Here on a wet Sunday morning was this handsome volume, leather-bound, of clear bold type and frequent illustrations -I'd look at the pictures. They were gawdy and full of action, quite a lot of them. Look at the priests of Dagon with their blood-splashed knives; Jael creeping into the tent of Sisera; Egyptian chariots overwhelmed by the Red Sea; Judas gloating over his pieces of silver like a carroty-headed Quilp...You simply had to read of these matters; and if the narrative didn't always come up to the quality of the illustrations, when it did you had a story which stayed in your imangination and gave it something to glow with. I read on, session after session, past all the boring bits and finished it at last.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Common      Print: Book

  

Thomas Carlyle : Proofs of 'Schiller's Life and Writings'

Even as it is, I contrive to in general to get along very reasonably. Jack comes down to me every night: we have a talk and a walk: we correct the Printer's sheets together, and are very happy. He is a kind faithful slut of a fellow.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Carlyle      Print: ProofsManuscript: Letter

 

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