Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 1349

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'[Philip Inman] loved everything by Charlotte Bronte, partly for what she had to say about the class system: "Characters like Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe were humble individuals in the eyes of the world, with only their dogged determination and lack of 'frills' as weapons against the dash and arrogance of those haughty and wealthy rivals among whom their lot was cast". Yet he admired Jane Austen for an equal but opposite reason: "The world of which she wrote, in which elegant gentlemen of fortune courted gentle, punctilliously correct ladies in refined drawing rooms, was a remote fairy-tale country to me. Some day, I thought, perhaps I would get to know a world in which voices were always soft and modulated and in which lively and witty conversation was more important than 'brass'."'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: unknown
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

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Philip Inman
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 1892
Socio-economic group: Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation: poor background, became a Labour MP
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: England
Country of experience: England
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Charlotte Bronte
Title: Villette
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: cheap reprint edition
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 1349  
Source - Print  
  Author: Jonathan Rose
  Editor: n/a
  Title: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
  Place of Publication: New Haven
  Date of Publication: 2001
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 49-50
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 49-50, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=1349, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

See Philip Inman, 'No Going Back' (London, 1952) pp.35-47

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)