Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Record 27290

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I belive it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquaintance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899
Date: Between 1 Sep 1889 and 31 Sep 1889
Country: London
Time: n/a
Place: London
6 Bessborough Gardens, Pimlico SW1
   
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:Joseph Conrad
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 3 Dec 1857
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Master mariner
Religion: originally Polish Catholic, by now agnostic/atheist
Country of origin: Poland
Country of experience: London
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Anthony Trollope
Title: n/a
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 27290  
Source - Print  
  Author: Joseph Conrad
  Editor: Mara Kalnins
  Title: A Personal Record
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1998 (1912)
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 73
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Joseph Conrad, Mara Kalnins (ed.), A Personal Record (London, 1998 (1912)), p. 73, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=27290, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

The title of the Trollope novel is not recorded.

 

 

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