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

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
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Listings for Reader:  

Tom

 

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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 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

  

n/a : Bible

'For Tom Barclay, son of a Catholic rag-and-bone collector, the erotic episodes in the Douay Bible "aroused my curiosity as to sexual matters". He found some answers in secondhand schooltexts of Ovid, Juvenal and Catullus: though he knew no Latin beyond the Mass, the English notes offered plenty of background on the filthy loves of gods and goddesses".'

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

  

Ovid : [unknown]

'For Tom Barclay, son of a Catholic rag-and-bone collector, the erotic episodes in the Douay Bible "aroused my curiosity as to sexual matters". He found some answers in secondhand schooltexts of Ovid, Juvenal and Catullus: though he knew no Latin beyond the Mass, the English notes offered plenty of background on the filthy loves of gods and goddesses".'

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

  

Juvenal : [unknown]

'For Tom Barclay, son of a Catholic rag-and-bone collector, the erotic episodes in the Douay Bible "aroused my curiosity as to sexual matters". He found some answers in secondhand schooltexts of Ovid, Juvenal and Catullus: though he knew no Latin beyond the Mass, the English notes offered plenty of background on the filthy loves of gods and goddesses".'

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

  

Catullus : [unknown]

'For Tom Barclay, son of a Catholic rag-and-bone collector, the erotic episodes in the Douay Bible "aroused my curiosity as to sexual matters". He found some answers in secondhand schooltexts of Ovid, Juvenal and Catullus: though he knew no Latin beyond the Mass, the English notes offered plenty of background on the filthy loves of gods and goddesses".'

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

  

 : Chorley Guardian

'Often I sat with her on Sunday afternoons before the fire blazing in an old-fashioned range which shone with black-leaded iron and gleaming steel. There was a home-made hearth-rug, but the rest of the floor was of stone flags, well washed and sprinkled with sand. She had had no schooling but had somehow learned to read in middle age. We would tackle the Chorley Guardian together, stumbling over the long words and improvising the pronunciation; Egypt was once read as "egg-pit".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Stephenson      Print: Newspaper

  

William Cobbett : Political Register

'A customer of Old Willy's in the Leather and nail line, telling us he had heard Cobbett's register read lately, where he says in about a year or perhaps rather more from this time wheat will be at 3s 6d or 4s pr Bushell; I told him that I had heard that Cobbett was a false prophet...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: [A customer of Old Willy's in the Leather and nail line] anon      Print: Serial / periodical

  

[n/a] : [playbill]

'As our roads home from school lay for a considerable distance in the same direction, Tommy Davies...and I generally walked home together, making numerous stoppages along the way to read, admire and compare the playbills of the different theatres. One afternoon in the latter end of the month of October we were going home, when our attention was forcibly arrested by a bill of an unusually attracive character. It was a very large, very highly coloured and very profusely illustrated bill...'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Tommy Davies      Print: Broadsheet, Poster, playbill

  

[n/a] : The Sheffield Iris

'Sent 29 stuff hats to Mr Booth -heard the "Iris" Paper read by Tom, find the country is much agitated at the conduct of ministers.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom      Print: Newspaper

  

[unknown] : [unknown]

'Anon to Sir W. Penn to bed, and made my boy Tom to read me asleep.'

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom      Print: Book

  

[unknown] : [Report of the reforming commission of 1618]

'Up, and to my office with Tom, whom I made read to me the books of Propositions in the time of the Grand Commission, which I did read a good part of before church'

Unknown
Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards      

  

[unknown] : [Report of the reforming commission of 1618]

'and I to my office and there made an end of the books of Proposicions; which did please me mightily to hear read, they being excellently writ and much to the purpose, and yet so as I think I shall make good use of in defence of our present constitution.'

Unknown
Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards [?]      

  

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

  

Gregorio Leti : Il nipotismo di Roma: or The history of the Popes nephews from the time of Sixtus the IV to the death of the last Pope Alexander the VII. In two parts. Written originally in Italian, in the year 1667 and Englished by W.A.

'So home and to supper; and my wife to read, and Tom, my "Nipotisme", and then to bed.'

Century: 1600-1699     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Edwards      Print: Book

  

George Stephens : Martinuzzi

Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 13 October 1841: 'I have not heard from Mr Horne since he wrote to me of Martinuzzi .. A friend of mine, Mrs Orme (who lived with us once as my governess & my sisters',) promised to procure for me from Dr Stone [friend of Horne's] a copy of Martinuzzi which he had marked the margin of, with "great laughter", "peals of laughter", as the spectators laughed where they ought to have cried [...] It was a transcript of the impressions of the first night.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Dr Tom Stone      Print: Book

  

Antonia White : Lost Traveller, The

'Find no desire to write this book ['The Lost Traveller'] since Tom read it. It produced a effect on him at first but that seemed to wear off.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Tom Hopkinson      Manuscript: Unknown

  

Antonia White : [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: Tom Hopkinson      Manuscript: Unknown

 

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