Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
Either at school or at home I read all the classics considered necessary for children: 'Treasure Island', 'Kidnapped', 'Little Women', 'David Copperfield', 'Ivanhoe', 'Robinson Crusoe'. I suppose I enjoyed them; I certainly did not resent or avoid them. Very occasionally some incident would seem to connect with my own life: the doings of the Spanish Inquisition in 'Westward Ho!' for example, fitted in exactly with what I had heard about Roman Catholics. But on the whole the themes appeared completely abstract and impersonal, even when the author intended a message to strike home. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did not cause me a moment's concern for the plight of Negro slaves in America, and neither did 'The Water Babies' for the sufferings of the child chimney-sweeps, not because these situations had been done away with, but because no book stirred me in that way...
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patricia Beer Print: Book
'[In The Saturday Review, 19 November 1904], "A Mother" records the books consumed since July by her sixteen-year-old daughter ... [who is] on the point of going in for the "Senior Cambridge" ... :
"Old Mortality", "The Farringdons", "By Mutual Consent" (L. T. Meade), "To Call Her Mine", "Kathrine Regina", and "Self or Bearer" (Besant); "Christmas Carol", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Hypatia", "Concerning Isabel Carnaby", "The Virginians", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Head of the House" (E. Everett-Green), "A Double Thread", "The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent", "Sesame and Lilies", "A Tale of Two Cities".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Lucy Lyttelton ... continued reading as avidly as ever after her marriage to Lord Frederick Cavendish, although she seems to have been happy that he should choose the books for their honeymoon: "Westward Ho!", Carlyle's "French Revolution", and Butler's "Analogy" ... A month after they left for their travels, they were still on "Westward Ho!".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lord and Lady Cavendish Print: Book
'Read Kingsley's Greek Heroes'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: Book
'Louis and I have begun reading "Westward Ho!" together [...] He reads to me every day out of "Westward Ho!" which I think very beautiful and interesting'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Maud Mary or "Princess Alice" Print: Book
'Friday 10th September
Today my friend Pat bought Kingsley?s ?Heroes? for Monica. I am reading it myself and then it goes away, to be out on her shelf, which I am planning with some thought, and, I hope, taste for childish requirements. It would make a nice subject for an essay. Teddie and I already have following for our childrens? bookshelf ?
Kinsgley?s ?Heroes?, ?Alice in Wonderland? and ?Through the Looking Glass?. A complete ?Hans Andersen? also a selection, beautifully illustrated by Dulac Lamb?s ?Tales from Shakespeare? and Hope-Moncrieff?s ?Classic Myth and Legend?. It is a fairly good beginning.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Monday 11th October
?Westward Ho!? (Charles Kingsley)'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
From Elizabeth Missing Sewell's Journal, 19 February 1856:
'I came here [Bournemouth] for a fortnight and have stayed a month. I have written a little, and read a good deal, -- the second volume of [italics]Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life[end italics], which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and [italics]Hypatia[end italics] and two sermons of Dr. Pusey's against Germanism, and part of [italics]Hero Worship[end italics], to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of [italics]The Times[end italics] every evening.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'I have written a little, and read a good deal, - the second volume of "Sir Charles Metcalfe's Life", which makes me look upon him as more of a hero than many whom Carlyle would worship; and "Hypatia" and two sermons of Dr Pusey's against Germanism, and part of "Hero Worship", to say nothing of pamphlets and magazines, and a diligent study of "The Times" every evening. "Hypatia" is a marvel; very painful because it gives such a miserable view of Christianity in those days. In striving to be true, the description seems as if it must be untrue, even by its own acknowledgment. There must have been self-denial and faith, and charity working beneath those turbulent outward scenes. Yet it gives one no sympathy with philosophy. Mrs Meyrick and I both agree that "Pelagia" wins our affection much more than "Hypatia".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mrs Meyrick Print: Book
'I mean to copy you out some lines of my [italics] hero [end italics], Mr Kingsley'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'On the 21st February [1851] their [Alfred and Emily Tennyson's] diary reads: "We read Alton Locke"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred and Emily Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson to Charles Kingsley (1853):
'Part of the conclusion [of Hypatia] seems to me particularly valuable. I mean the talk of the Christianized Jew to the classic boy. Hypatia's mistreatment by the Alexandrians I found almost too horrible. It is very powerful and tragic; but I objected to the word "naked." Pelagia's nakedness has nothing which revolts one... but I really was hurt at having Hypatia stript, tho' I see that it adds to the tragic, and the picture as well as the moral is a fine one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
'The programme of selections from and papers on Kingsley was then proceeded with, C.E. Stansfield reading a paper on Kingsley as a religious leader and F.J. Edminson on a visit to Warsley [?]. Readings were given by Mrs Stansfield, Mrs Goadby and A. Rawlings.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lilian Goadby Print: Book
'On board the steamer between Marseilles and Malta, besides reading "Hypatia", which was "too highly coloured" for his taste, and re-reading "Tancred", and writing "more than half the preface" to his lectures, he found time to send home a long letter'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Print: Book
Transcript of interview: 'I don’t think there was anything that I wasn’t allowed to read. It was only when I went to school to boarding school and all my friends were reading Gone with the Wind, and my mother decided she would rather I didn’t read Gone with the Wind because of a very racy chapter where Melanie gives birth to a baby and she didn’t think that was suitable for me. I was thirteen or fourteen and I didn’t read it but I did read Vicky Baum’s Hotel Berlin which had a much worse scene where a woman gave birth in a rowing boat… I can’t think of anything that was actually banned at all. I read lots and lots of my father’s books and this was a book that I loved - Palgrave’s Golden Treasury [shows book]. My mother gave me this [shows book]. This is the one I learned to read on. This is the Water Babies. I remember sitting up in bed reading Mrs Be Done By As You Did and shouting out “I can read, I can read”! I was six. I didn’t learn to read until quite late.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
8 February 1875:
'We had an agreeable journey to Folkestone where we took ship [for china-collecting expedition in Europe] [...] I was driven below by the intense cold so I lay down and read, with the greatest interest, my friend Charles Kingsley's Hereward. The subject is laid in my own Lincolnshire, and I know all the scenery he describes o'er well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'a strange book, full of ability, chartism, some blasphemy and infidelity, but on the whole a useful book for the upper classes to read — not the lower'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to Elizabeth Gaskell, 6 August 1851:
'I have read "The Saint's Tragedy". As a "work of art" it seems to me far superior to either
"Alton Locke" or "Yeast." Faulty it may be, crude and unequal, yet there are portions where
some of the deep chords of human life are swept with a hand which is strong even while it
falters [comments further] [...] Seldom do I cry over books, but here my eyes rained as I
read. When Elizabeth turns her face to the wall — I stopped — there needed no more [makes
further brief comments on text].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
'He [Joseph Conrad] would read to me for long periods and make birds and other things out of sheets of paper which he folded with great dexterity. [...] His choice of books always met with my approval; I believe he must have read them all during his youth and enjoyed re-reading them almost as much as I enjoyed listening. Among them were Charles Kingsley's "Greek Heroes", Fennimore [sic] Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans", "[The] Deerslayer", "The Pathfinder" and Captain Marryat's "Peter Simple", "[Mr] Midshipman Easy",etc.[...] Some of these volumes [...] are still on my bookshelves here with his signature inside the cover.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'You are right about Two Years Ago.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Meeting held at Eynsham, Shinfield Rd., 20.XII.33.
E. Dorothy Brain in the chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. Schoolmasters in Literature were portrayed by a series of readings from biography and
fiction. There were ten in all and they reflected the various estimation in which these beings
are held, and were held generations ago. In spite of the dullness, the jealousy and the morbid
introspection that characterize the assistant, the profession is in part redeemed by the haloes
that flicker around its heads - generally, it must be admitted, very much in retrospect.
After all, would other professions fare much better?
We are certainly indebted to the committee who prepared the readings, and regret that
Reginald Robson felt it necessary to omit the one he had allotted to himself.
The readings were given in this order.
1. From Roger Ascham V. W. Alexander
2. [From] Westward Ho H. R. Smith
3. [From] Essays of Elia Janet Rawlings
4. [From] T. E. Brown's Clifton Celia Burrow
6. [From] Stalky & Co G. H. S. Burrow
5. [From] Life of Frederick Andrews Mary Robson
7. [From] Vanity Fair S. A. Reynolds
8. [From] Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill Dorothy Brain
9. [From] Jeremy at Crale E. B. Castle
10. [From] Rugby Chapel F. E. Pollard
'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at 68 Northcourt Avenue
20th III 1935
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting were read & approved
[...]
4. The Program of anonymous readings was then proceeded with[;] members reading in the
order in which they sat round the room. An interval of about 2 minutes at the end of each
piece was allowed for cogitation at the end of which the reader anounced the authors name &
the work from which he had read. Identification proved unexpectedly dificult[.] No one reading
was identified by everyone & the highest scorer only guessed eight authors & 4 & ½ works
Reader Author Work
E. B. Castle Plato Phaedo
M. S. W. Pollard R. Browning Pictures in Florence
E. Goadby Saml. Butler Notes
M. E. Robson Flecker Hassan
R. H. Robson Belloc Eyewitness
E. C. Stevens M. Arnold Self dependance
E. D. Brain B. Shaw Pre. to Back to Methuselah
M. Castle T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus
A. Rawlings R. Browning Pheidippides
J. Rawlings G. Eliot Middlemarch
E. B. Smith Lewis Carroll Phantasmagoria
F. E. Reynolds Tennyson Locksley Hall
S. A. Reynolds E. B. Browning Lady Geraldine’s Courtship
H. R. Smith Chas. Kingsley Westward Ho
F. E. Pollard Shelley Prometheus Unbound'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
Meeting held at Ashton Lodge :- 3. 7. 37.
Henry Marriage Wallis in the Chair.
1. Minutes of last read & approved
[...]
7. The Meeting then gave its attention to Witches.
H. M Wallis led off with a paper on Witchcraft and readings were given from the following
books:- MacBeth – The Witch Scene[?] by Janet Rawlings, Dorothy Brain, & Dorothea Taylor
with F. E. Pollard & V. W. Alexander as Banquo & MacBeth
Samuel – The Witch of Endor scene by Mary Robson
Westward Ho (Lucy), by Dorothy Brain
Trials for Witchcraft, by Howard Smith
Precious Bane, by Rosamund Wallis
Between all these items there was considerable discussion. Members were able to vie with
one another in tale of mystery and eerie happenings, and if all the conversation was not
strictly relevant at least the interest did not flag.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Brain Print: Book
'I ... took an active part in the work of the [Old Meeting Church] and became a Sunday School teacher. Happily, the class of small boys I was called on to manage could be weaned from the general disorder of the school by descriptive stories from the Old Testament, the thrilling tales of Kingsley's heroes, and the recital of narrative poetry.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue: 18. 3. 40.
Sylvanus A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last read and approved
2. We began our meeting with four readings taken before the interval. These
reading were love scenes from the following books or poems:
Chas. Kingsley’s “Westward Ho”: read by Elsie Sikes
Jas. Hilton’s “Goodbye Mr. Chips”: [read by] M Dilkes
J. R. Lowell’s “Coortin’”: [read by] C. E. Stansfield
Rev. W. Barnes’s “Bit o’ Sly Coortin’”: [read by] S. A. Reynolds
These readings stirred the amorous instincts of certain of our members who
regaled the club with courting stories. [...]
5. We then [...] listened to readings from
Shakespeare’s: Merchant of Venice, by R & M Robson
Browning’s: By the Fireside, by F. E. Pollard
F. Stockton’s: Squirrel Inn, by Rosamund Wallis
H. M. Wallis’s: Mistakes of Miss Manisty, by H. R. Smith
Thackeray’s: The Rose and the Ring, by Muriel Stevens
6. These duly received their meed of comment & appreciation, and we then took
our leave, two or three of the husbands going home, we suspect, to curtain
lectures.
[signed as a true record:] F. E. Pollard
17.IV.40.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elsie Sikes Print: Book
'Rested all the afternoon and evening. Read
Andromeda.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Verena Vera Pennefather Print: Book
