Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 4466

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945
Date: unknown
Country: Scotland
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
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:William Gallacher
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 25 Dec 1881
Socio-economic group: Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation: brass fitter, later Communist MP
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: Scotland
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Title: [unknown]
Genre: Fiction
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 4466  
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: 319
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 319, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=4466, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

See William Gallacher, 'Rise Like Lions' (London, 1951), pp129-30, 180; and The Last Memoirs of William Gallacher (London, 1966), pp25, 35.

 

 

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