Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 17758

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I find I have no time for reading except times of fatigue when I wish merely to refresh myself. O − and I read over again for this purpose − Flaubert?s "Tentation de Saint Antoine":it struck me a good deal at first, but this second time it has fetched me immensely; I am but just done with it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to take with my present statement that it?s the finest thing I ever read! Of course, it isn?t that, it?s full of [italics] longueurs [end italics], and it is not quite ?red up?, as we say in Scotland, not quite articulate, but there are splendid things in it.'
Century: 1850-1899
Date: 21 Oct 1874
Country: Scotland
Time: n/a
Place: city: Edinburgh
specific address: 17 Heriot Row
   
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:Robert Louis Stevenson
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 13 Nov 1850
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Aspiring writer and intermittent law student
Religion: Church of Scotland (wavering)
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: Scotland
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Gustave Flaubert
Title: La Tentation de Saint Antoine.
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: The final version was published in 1874. An earlier version of the subject had been put aside.
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 17758  
Source - Print  
  Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
  Editor: Bradford A. Booth
  Title: The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, April 1874-July 1879
  Place of Publication: New Haven and London
  Date of Publication: 1994
  Vol: 2
  Page: 66
  Additional comments: Letter 323, To Katharine de Mattos, [? October 1874]. Co-editor Ernest Mehew. The date in square brackets has been added by the editors. The date of the READING EXPERIENCE is deduced from the date given to the Letter by the editors.

Citation: Robert Louis Stevenson, Bradford A. Booth (ed.), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, April 1874-July 1879 (New Haven and London, 1994), 2, p. 66, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17758, accessed: 20 April 2024

Additional comments:

RLS read the novel in French, of which he seems to have had a reasonable knowledge. A search has revealed no published English version available in 1874.

 

 

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