Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 947

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849
Date: unknown
Country: n/a
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:Joseph Barker
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 1806
Socio-economic group: Clergy (includes all denominations)
Occupation: circuit preacher
Religion: Methodist
Country of origin: n/a
Country of experience: n/a
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: John Dryden
Title: n/a
Genre: Poetry, Y
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 947  
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: 32
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 32, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=947, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

See Joseph Barker, 'The History and Confessions of a Man' (1846)

 

 

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