Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 8941

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'At that time [my eighth year] I had read, under my father?s tuition, a number of Greek prose authors, among whom I remember the whole of Herodotus, and of Xenophon?s Ceropaedia and Memorials of Socrates; some of the lives of the philosophers by Diogenes Laertius; part of Lucian, and Isocrates ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem.'
Century: 1800-1849
Date: Between 1 Jan 1809 and 31 Dec 1814
Country: England
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:John Stuart Mill
Age Child (0-17)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 20 May 1806
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Administrator in the East India Company (joins the company as a clerk in 1823, retires as chief of his office and Examiner of India Correspondence in
Religion: Atheist
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: Lucian
Title: n/a
Genre: Classics
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 8941  
Source - Print  
  Author: John Stuart Mill
  Editor: Jack Stillinger
  Title: Autobiography
  Place of Publication: Boston
  Date of Publication: 1969
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 5
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: John Stuart Mill, Jack Stillinger (ed.), Autobiography (Boston, 1969), p. 5, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=8941, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

Mill was translating the text under his father?s guidance, as part of his education in the Ancient Greek language. He reveals on p.6 that, since there were no available dictionaries he could use, he had to interrupt his father?s work (on his History of India) to ask him for the meaning of all words unfamiliar to him at the time.

 

 

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