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

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Listings for Reader:  

Dorothy Burnham

 

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Keats  : 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

'Communication between these poets and myself was instantaneous. I saw with delighted amazement that all poetry had been written specially for me. Although I spoke - in my back street urchin accents - of La Belly Dame Sans Murky, yet in Keats's chill little poem I seemed to sense some essence of the eternal ritual of romantic love. And Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" bowled me over. I read it again and again until I fairly lived in a world of "armies that clash by night" and stately weeping Queens. So the poets helped me escape the demands of communal living which now, at thirteen, were beginning to be intolerable to me'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Burnham      Print: Unknown

  

Alfred Tennyson : More d'Arthur

'Communication between these poets and myself was instantaneous. I saw with delighted amazement that all poetry had been written specially for me. Although I spoke - in my back street urchin accents - of La Belly Dame Sans Murky, yet in Keats's chill little poem I seemed to sense some essence of the eternal ritual of romantic love. And Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" bowled me over. I read it again and again until I fairly lived in a world of "armies that clash by night" and stately weeping Queens. So the poets helped me escape the demands of communal living which now, at thirteen, were beginning to be intolerable to me'.

Century:      Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Burnham      Print: Unknown

  

n/a : The Magnet

'Domestic servant Dorothy Burnham never read girls' stories ("I found them insipid and meaningless") but she and her older sister were fixated on the "Magnet" to the point of mimicking the school uniform... This partly reflected their new found interest in the opposite sex. Dorothy identified especially with that subversive fellow the Bounder, who smoked, gambled, and even "split an infinitive or two".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Burnham      Print: Serial / periodical

 

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