Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 5051

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'James Williams admitted that, growing up in rural Wales, "I'd read anything rather than not read at all. I read a great deal of rubbish, and books that were too 'old', or too 'young' for me". He consumed the Gem, Magnet and Sexton Blake as well as the standard boys' authors (Henty, Ballantyne, Marryat, Fenimore Cooper, Twain) but also Dickens, Scott, Trollope, the Brontes, George Eliot, even Prescott's "The Conquest of Peru" and "The Conquest of Mexico". He picked "The Canterbury Tales" out of an odd pile of used books for sale, gradually puzzled out the Middle English, and eventually adopted Chaucer as his favourite poet'.
Century: 1900-1945
Date: unknown
Country: Wales
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:James Williams
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 1900
Socio-economic group: Unknown/NA
Occupation: n/a
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: Wales
Country of experience: Wales
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Title: Canterbury Tales, The
Genre: Poetry
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 5051  
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: 373
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 373, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=5051, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

See James Williams, 'Give me Yesterday' (Gwasg Gomer, 1971) pp26-7

 

 

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