Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 18148

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I would have answered your letter sooner but for a long series of movements and countermovements I have had to execute. I also wished to read Goethe's book, before determining on your proposal with regard to it. This I have at length done: I find it will not answer. The work is incomplete, the first volume only having yet appeared; and it consists of a series of fragments, individually beautiful, but quite disjointed, and in their present state scarcely intelligible.'
Century: 1800-1849
Date: Between 29 Jul 1824 and 14 Aug 1824
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: city: Birmingham
   
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:Thomas Carlyle
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 4 Dec 1824
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Writer / Academic
Religion: Lapsed Calvinist
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: England
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Title: Meister Wilhelm's Wanderjahre (first volume)
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Publication details: first volume - originally published 1821
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 18148  
Source - Print  
  Author: Thomas Carlyle
  Editor: C R Sanders
  Title: The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle
  Place of Publication: Durham, North Carolina
  Date of Publication: 1970
  Vol: 3
  Page: 136
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Thomas Carlyle, C R Sanders (ed.), The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, North Carolina, 1970), 3, p. 136, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=18148, accessed: 17 April 2024

Additional comments:

Taken from letter from TC to George Boyd dated 14 August 1824, written at Birmingham. Pages 136-137 in this edition. Date range based on previous reference in a letter to John Taylor dated 29 July 1824 (p.117 in this edition) where he mentions receiving his copy of the book that day (RED id 18129).

 

 

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