Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 17396

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 4 December 1844: 'The only work of Eugene Sue which I have read among those you ask about, is "Le Salamandre" [...] The only remarkable thing is the preface, in which [...] he says that to represent good people as successful in this world and rogues as unsuccessful would take away the chief argument for a future life. Now I really do hold that virtue, although not always prosperous, is yet upon the whole far happier than vice [...] I am quite sure that to represent systematically vice as fortunate, and goodness as wretched, tends to make selfish people vicious; and it is really wicked in Balzac to give one the pain he does in this way. In "Une Tenebreuse Affaire," for instance, I was so provoked with him for making Napoleon kill Michu and forgive those dolts of gentlemen, that I could have flung the book at his (Balzac's) head, if luckily that wonderful head had been within reach.'
Century: 1800-1849
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:Mary Russell Mitford
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Female
Date of Birth 16 Dec 1787
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, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Honore de Balzac
Title: Une tenebreuse affaire
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 17396  
Source - Print  
  Author: n/a
  Editor: Philip Kelley and Scott Lewis
  Title: The Brownings' Correspondence
  Place of Publication: Winfield
  Date of Publication: 1991
  Vol: 9
  Page: 261
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Philip Kelley and Scott Lewis (ed.), The Brownings' Correspondence (Winfield, 1991), 9, p. 261, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17396, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

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