'like the great man [Carlyle] himself, [Mary Smith] studied Fichte, Schiller and Goethe'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
"[S. T.] C[oleridge] stayed up until one o'clock in the morning to read Tytler's translation of The Robbers ... "
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'On 16 March 1840 W[ordsworth] told [Henry Crabb] Robinson that "C[oleridge]. translated the 2nd part of Wallenstein under my roof at Grasmere from MSS ..."'
Unknown
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
'[the father of C.H. Rolph] read diligently through a list of the "Hundred Best Books" compiled in 1886 by Sir John Lubbock. "It included nearly all of the books that one didn't want to read or gave up if one tried", Rolph recalled: "Aristotle's Ethics, The Koran, Xenophon's Memorabilia, The Nibelunglied, Schiller's William Tell; and it ended with 'Dickens's Pickwick and David Copperfield' (only) but 'Scott's novels' (apparently the lot). For the most part they were the books which it seemed, you should expect to find in every intelligent man's private library; with, in most such libraries, their leaves uncut'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Rolph Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 20 August 1800: 'Read Wallenstein and sent it off ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Sheet
'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
Henry James to Thomas Sergeant Perry, from home of host family in Bonn, Sunday 5 August 1860: "[on Wednesday morning] We [himself and his brother William] ... commenced study, which simply consists in translating German into English. I am now working at Schiller's play of Maria Stuart, which I like exceedingly, though I do get on so slowly with it ... I worked on ploddingly till dinner-time which is one o'clock."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
From Chronology: Hemans's Life and Publications: '[in 1824] F[elicia] H[emans] studies German (Schiller, Herder, and Goethe, Korner).'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Felicia Hemans Print: Book
'I have translated a portion of Schiller's History of the thirty years war (it is all about Gustavus and the fellow-soldados of Dugald Dalgetty your dearly-beloved friend); and sent it off, with a letter introduced by Tait the Review-bookseller, to Longman and Co London.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The colossal "Wallenstein" and Thekla the angelical, and Max her impetuous lofty-minded lover are all gone to rest; I have closed Schiller for a night; and what can I do better than chat for one short hour with my old, earliest friend?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
[27th December]'I took my lessons and learnt part of a superb tragedy in german called "Don Carlos" with Mr Jaegle.'
...
[28th December]'We finished the lecture of "Don Carlos" that interested me extremely it really is the finest trajedy I have ever read. How much do I hate the memory of the abominable Philip whilst I respected and admired that of the Marquis de Poso that faithful and tender friend who lets himself be thought a traitor in order to save the life of Don Carlos his friend to whom he was under a small obligation, who takes his own life in order to save his and what was my sorrow to see that charming man end his life in vain. The wicked Philip stabbed his son the same day through jealousy! Another thing that annoyed me was not to have the pleasure of seeing the abominable tyrant punished yet I think that he is and that certainly and already.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
'Pastor Fido
Orlando Furioso
Livy's History
Seneca's Works
Tasso's Girusalame Liberata
Tassos Aminta
2 vols of Plutarch in Italian
Some of the plays of Euripedes
Seneca's Tragedies
Reveries of Rousseau
Hesiod
Novum Organum
Alfieri's Tragedies
Theocritus
Ossian
Herodotus
Thucydides
Homer
Locke on the Human Understanding
Conspiration de Rienzi
History of arianism
Ochley's History of the Saracens
Mad. de Stael sur la literature'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ... ; "The Robbers" and two other plays of Schiller; ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'I thought to rise at five on Thursday morning, but fatigue made my head bad. I slept till nine - I opened "Mary Stewart" after breakfast but Dr Fiffe interrupted me, and teazed me to play at shuttlecock till I consented-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Book
'During the last week I have also read the latter half of 'Maria Stuart' - some scenes of Alfieri - and a portion of 'Tacitus' (which by the way is the hardest Latin I ever saw) - when you devoted four hours of my day to the study of history, what did you mean should become of my Italian and my dear German?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'I have finished William Tell - and mean to commence Turandot on Monday - I could read Schiller for ever - who but himself could have made such a play as Tell on such a plan?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Sheet
'I am busy with Gibbon, my adorable's life of Necker (not yours) and Fiesko. Either Schiller's prose is much more difficult than his verse or my head is much thicker than it was in winter.- I hope it is not putting you to inconvenience my detaining these books so long[.] If you want them tell me instantly-'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: BookManuscript: Letter
'I am daily expecting a letter from you on the subject of the Life of Schiller. I have got a copy of his Works beside me, which I have been glancing over; and I feel anxious to commence the business fo remoulding and enlarging, in due form.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'The King then asked him what he thought of Dr. Hill. Johnson answered, he was an ingenious man, but had no veracity; and immediately mentioned, as an instance of it, an assertion of that writer, that he had seen objects magnified to a much greater degree by using three or four microscopes at a time than by using one. "Now, (added Johnson,) every one acquainted with microscopes, knows, that the more of them he looks through, the less the object will appear." "Why, (replied the King,) this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it clumsily; for, if that be the case, every one who can look through a microscope will be able to detect him."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing Print: Book
'He [George Gissing] recommended [in letters to his siblings] books like Morris's "Earthly Paradise", a poem "abounding in the quaintest archaisms"; Ruskin's "Unto this last", which Gissing liked as a "contribution to - or rather onslaught upon - Political Economy"; Landor's "Imaginary Conversations", for its "perfect prose"; and Scott's "Redgauntlet", for the romantic situations of which he must "try to find parallel kinds in modern life". Gissing kept up the habit throughout his life: he was always reading and always recommending books to his friends and family. In the early 1880s he read a lot of German, and to his brother, Algernon, particularly recommended Eckerman's "Conversations with Goethe", "a most delightful book". Meanwhile his sister, Margaret, was reading Schiller under his direction'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Gissing Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Threadneedle Street, 14th October, 1818.
'Rose soon after 6. Read Say's chapter on Commercial Industry [...] After dinner read some of Schiller's "Don Carlos," then practiced on the bass from 1/2 past 7 till 9; at 9 I drank tea, then read some more of Say, on the mode in which capital operates.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed.
'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
From the diary kept by George Grote for his fiancee, Harriet Lewin (autumn 1818):
'Rose at 1/2 past 6 [...] Read Say and Turgot until 12, and put down some remarks on the manner in which accumulation takes place. Neither Say nor Turgot completely satisfy my mind on this subject [...] Dined alone. Read some scenes in Schiller's "Don Carlos." Considered as complete dramas, I think both "Don Carlos" and "Marie Stuart" are very defective. There is too much mixture of paltry and unimportant intrigue in each [...] There are, however, most masterly single scenes to be found in them [...] After reading this, I practised on the bass for about an hour, then drank tea, and read Adam Smith's incomparable chapter on the Mercantile System until 11, when I went to bed.
'Rose at 6. Read some more of A. Smith on the Mercantile System [...] Dined at 1/2 past 5. Read Don Carlos, and played on the bass for the next two hours, when I went and locked up [the family banking house]; drank tea at 1/2 past 8, and began some more of Say; but I found my mind languid, so that I was obliged to change my study, and took up a dissertation of Turgot, "Sur les valeurs et monnoies," which I read with considerable attention. Went to bed soon after 11.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Grote Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 31 July-2 August 1796: 'Have you read Cabal & Love? in spite of a translation for which the translator deserves hanging — the fifth act is dreadfully affecting.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: '[Matthew] Lewis's poetry is contemptible — except the Water King — & Alonzo & Imogine — of which the story is bad — & the most striking part very inferior to what appears to me its original the Franciscan monk at the marriage of Lorenzo in the Ghost-Seer of Frederick Schiller. an author compared to whom the sublimity of Eschylus & Shakespere is little have you read Fiesco? Stodhard of Christ Church is one of the translators. you may hear something of him from Collins — if you still retain his acquaintance: with friendship I believe him totally unacquainted.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 29-30 August 1796: '[Matthew] Lewis's poetry is contemptible — except the Water King — & Alonzo & Imogine — of which the story is bad — & the most striking part very inferior to what appears to me its original the Franciscan monk at the marriage of Lorenzo in the Ghost-Seer of Frederick Schiller. an author compared to whom the sublimity of Eschylus & Shakespere is little have you read Fiesco? Stodhard of Christ Church is one of the translators. you may hear something of him from Collins — if you still retain his acquaintance: with friendship I believe him totally unacquainted.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
'He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. which we read together ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
'Maria Stuart'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Good Print: Book
