Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 16563

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I remember, when a little boy, getting my first introduction to the novels of Walter Scott - then the "Great Unknown". One of my sisters, when an infant, was sent to the country to be nursed; and I used to accompany Peg Nielson, our servant, to see the child on Saturday afternoons... Peg was a capital story-teller and many a time did she entertain us with "auld warld" tales of brownies, fairies, ghosts and witches, often making our flesh creep. But she could also be amusing and cheerful in the adventures she narrated. While on the way to Clerkington Mains, I asked her to tell me a story. "Yes she would: it was a story of a gypsy woman and a little boy who was carried away in a ship by the smugglers." And then she began, and told me, in a manner that seemed most graphic, the wonderful adventures of Harry Bertram and Meg Merrilies, as related in the well-known novel of "Guy Mannering". Many years after I read the book and found that she had omitted nothing of the story: her memory was so good and her power of narration so excellent.'
Century: 1800-1849
Date: unknown
Country: unknown
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:Samuel Smiles
Age Unknown
Gender Male
Date of Birth 23 Dec 1812
Socio-economic group: Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder
Occupation: son of paper maker, later writer
Religion: Presbyterian
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: unknown
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Walter Scott
Title: Guy Mannering
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 16563  
Source - Print  
  Author: Samuel Smiles
  Editor: Thomas Mackay
  Title: The autobiography of Samuel Smiles
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1997
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 20
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Samuel Smiles, Thomas Mackay (ed.), The autobiography of Samuel Smiles (London, 1997), p. 20, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=16563, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

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