Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 4224

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945
Date: unknown
Country: England
Time: daytime: at weekends
Place: county: Nottinghamshire
other location: down coal pit, half a mile underground
   
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:G.A.W. Tomlinson
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 1906
Socio-economic group: Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation: collier
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: Geoffrey Chaucer
Title: The Canterbury Tales
Genre: Poetry
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 4224  
Source - Print  
  Author: Jonathan Rose
  Editor: n/a
  Title: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
  Place of Publication: New Haven
  Date of Publication: 2001
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 242
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 242, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=4224, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

See G.A.W. Tomlinson, 'Coal-Miner', pp74-77. No further reference traceable in Rose.

 

 

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