Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 28966

Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'At other times he would tell me about the Malay Archipelago and the Malays and show me pictures in A. R. Wallace's book about that part of the world.


[...]

He would read to me about far away places, explaining how the natives built their houses on poles driven into the river beds of eastern rivers.'

Century: 1900-1945
Date: Between 1910 and 1914
Country: England
Time: n/a
Place: Orlestone nr. Ashford
Kent
Capel House
   
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: Gentry
Gentry 'Szlachta', or Polish landed gentry/nobility
Occupation: Master mariner and author
Religion: Roman Catholic
Country of origin: Poland
Country of experience: England
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
John Conrad, Joseph's Conrad's younger son
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Alfred Russel Wallace
Title: The Malay Archipelago The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise
Genre: Geography / Travel, Science, Natural history
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: first published Macmillan, 1869, two volumes, revised through 10 editions, last in 1890
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 28966  
Source - Print  
  Author: John Conrad
  Editor: n/a
  Title: Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered
  Place of Publication: Cambridge
  Date of Publication: 1981
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 25, 101-2
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: John Conrad, Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered  (Cambridge, 1981), p. 25, 101-2, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=28966, accessed: 19 April 2024

Additional comments:

These are two of a number of references, though there are none specifically by name in Conrad's letters, to his serial reading of Wallace's 'The Malay Archipelago. It was said to be 'a constant companion of Conrad's from the mid 1890s onward' (p.304 Knowles and Moore, 2000).

 

 

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