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

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Record Number: 20629


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I have just read Love on the Dole and His Worship The Mayor, books which were sent me by a friend a short time ago, for the second time, and I feel impelled to tell you that I know you to be, not only a born writer, but a great writer (and I never use that word lightly). I do not know when I have been so deeply, so terribly moved and so strongly impressed as I have been these two superb novels. How on earth you succeeded in combining the beauty and the unutterable tenderness of these books, their beautiful and inevitable form, with such an apalling indictment of our present damnable civilisation, I don't know. You are such a writer that the terrible tragedies of starvation, the people whose poignant and shining love, love between boy and girl, between husband and wife, love between friends, seem to me to have been known all my life.....'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1935 and 18 Mar 1935

Country:

France

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Paris
specific address: 129 Rue Saint-Dominique VIIe

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown


Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Edith Sitwell

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

7 Sep 1887

Socio-Economic Group:

Gentry

Occupation:

Poet

Religion:

Christian

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

France

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a


Additional Comments:

n/a



Text Being Read:

Author:

Walter Greenwood

Title:

Love on the Dole

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

1933

Provenance

owned


Source Information:

Record ID:

20629

Source:

Print

Author:

Edith Sitwell

Editor:

Richard Greene

Title:

Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1998

Vol:

n/a

Page:

145

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Edith Sitwell, Richard Greene (ed.), Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell (London, 1998), p. 145, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/RED/record_details.php?id=20629, accessed: 20 April 2024


Additional Comments:

Love on the Dole was Walter Greenwood's first novel. This is an extract from a letter to Greenwood in which Edith comments at some length and in which she tells him she will be writing to Siegried Sassoon (who is quoted) to ask if he has read the books. Such a letter does not appear in this collection.

   
   
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