Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Record 20707

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'Dr Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was long intimately acquainted with him, and has preserved a few anecdotes concerning him, regretting that he was not a more diligent collector, informs me, that "When a boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he retained his fondness for them through life; so that (adds his Lordship) spending part of a summer at my parsonage-house in the country, he chose for his regular reading the old Spanish romance of "Felixmarte of Hircania", in folio, which he read quite through. Yet I have heard him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profesion'.
Century: 1700-1799
Date: Between 1 Jan 1712 and 18 Sep 1727
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: other location: home of Dr Percy
   
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 Johnson
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 18 Sep 1709
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: later 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: Melchor de Ortega
Title: Felixmarte de Hircania
Genre: Fiction, romances
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 20707  
Source - Print  
  Author: James Boswell
  Editor: R. W. Chapman
  Title: Life of Johnson
  Place of Publication: Oxford
  Date of Publication: 1980
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 36
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: James Boswell, R. W. Chapman (ed.), Life of Johnson  (Oxford, 1980), p. 36, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=20707, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

Originally published 1791.

 

 

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