Record Number: 21209

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'La Silence de la Mer by "Vercors" (Schlumberger?) was given me by Raymond Mortimer yesterday and read without much admiration though with plenty of sympathy: published secretly under the Nazis in France. Read also too slow a story by Giono of the coming of Pan: it quickens at the end where human beings and animals dance together, with regrettable results [...] Read too in Illusions Perdues [...] and in Gide's Journal [...] Gide aroused my envy by reading, reading, but if I kept a journal I too should appear to have read, read a lot.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1943 and 31 Dec 1943

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

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

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Edward Morgan Forster

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1 Jan 1879

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Writer

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Honore de Balzac

Title:

Illusions perdues

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

21209

Source:

Print

Author:

E. M. Forster

Editor:

Philip Gardner

Title:

Commonplace Book

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1985

Vol:

n/a

Page:

155

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

E. M. Forster, Philip Gardner (ed.), Commonplace Book (London, 1985), p. 155, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/RED/record_details.php?id=21209, accessed: 27 March 2023

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Additional Comments:

See also p.161 in source for further comments on reading of this text, from Forster's 1943 Commonplace Book, where Forster remarks on 'the bad taste of Balzac, his unpolished journalistic style, his formlessness, his unevenness, his obsession with money,' concluding: 'Having never had to earn my living, I pick faults in him where I can.'