'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'During these early years [Daphne du Maurier] filled her head with tales of adventure, romances, histories and popular novels, including such books as Treasure Island, The Snow Queen, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Old St Paul's, The Tower of London, Nicholas Nickleby, Mr Midshipman Easy, Bleak House, Robinson Crusoe, The Mill on the Floss, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey(sic), Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The seeds of her own novels were planted during these intensive, sometimes acted-out, reading sessions. The fascination with the sea, the importance of an historical sense of place, the theme of the dual personality, are all reflected in her reading during these formative years'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Daphne du Maurier Print: Book
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
'The hero seems to me superior to the Rochester or the Louis Moore type, who are all rather lay-figures. Nor do I admire the sister?s work [Wuthering Heights] so much as you do. I see in it more violence than real strength & more rant than genuine passion. However all this is a matter of taste. I will remark, by the way, that I think there is some excuse for the charge of coarseness, as, e.g., the scene where Jane Eyre is half inclined to go to Rochester?s bedroom. I don?t mean coarseness in the sense of prurience; for I fully agree that Miss Bronte writes as a thoroughly pureminded woman; but she is more close to the physical side of passion than young ladies are expected to be?There is also some coarseness in the artistic sense in Jane Eyre. The mad wife is I fancy, unnecessarily bestial? I don?t think justice is generally done to C Bronte now & I shall be glad for that reason to insert your eloquent article.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
Anne Bronte, diary paper for 31 July 1845 'Emily is engeaged [sic] in writing the Emperor Julius's life She has read some of it and I want very much to hear the rest ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Emily Bronte Manuscript: Unknown
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George SAnd, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte, Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, 1850: 'One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on an MS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting ... I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, -- a deep conviction that these were not common effusions ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, September 1848: ' ... of ["Ellis Bell's" poetry's] merit I am deeply convinced, and have been from the moment the MS. fell into my hands. The pieces ... stirred my heart like the sound of a trumpet when I read them alone and in secret.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Unknown
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 28 September 1850, on preparing to write preface to new edition of "Wuthering Heights": 'I am ... compelling myself to read it [the novel] over -- for the first time of opening the book since my sister's death. Its power fills me with renewed admiration ...'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte
'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 Reader/Listener/Group: James Williams Print: Book
'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'Today I finished "Wuthering Heights" and began "Villette". I must try and get a set of the Bronte books as soon as I can - they are most refreshing and not a bit old fashioned as they ought to be.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
'As to what they read [at the Gower Street School in the 1880s] -- and [...] Lucy Harrison [headmistress] read aloud to them untiringly -- it must be what went deepest and lifted highest -- Shakespeare, Dante in Cary's translation, Blake, Wordsworth, and [...] [Miss Harrison's] own favourites, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, the Brownings, Coventry Patmore [...] A reading which all [...] [Miss Harrison's] pupils heard often, and never forgot, was from Alice Meynell's "Preludes" of 1875 -- the sonnet "To a Daisy"'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lucy Harrison, headmistress, Charlotte Mew, and other pupils at Gower Street school 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
'A slight work, but just about perfect. In fact I do not know how to find fault with it. ["Nocturne", 1917] . . . And I left off "Wuthering Heights" in order to read it, which was a fairly clear test. (Never read W.H. before. Very fine.) . . . Marguerite is now reading "Nocturne", confound her!'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Transcript of interview: 'And another one that I loved was when I had mumps and was in the san which had a very small library and I read Still She Wished for Company which was a ghost story. And I had a soft spot for Harrison Ainsworth, who wrote historical novels about the plague, and the fire of London and so forth. I had a strong sense of the macabre. I loved Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which I read when I was 15/16 and I was very interested in books on medical discoveries, medical research and so on.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[From Charlotte Bronte's introduction to the 1850 edition of her sisters' novels:]
'One day in the autumn of 1845 I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume in verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse. I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me -- a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearest and dearest to her could, with impunity, intrude unlicenced: it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.... Meantime my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily's
had given me pleasure I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet, sincere pathos of their own.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Unknown
The Bronte enthusiast Sidney Biddell to Charlotte Bronte's former schoolfriend, Ellen Nussey,
15 May 1883:
'Miss Robinson's "Emily Bronte" is prettily enough written [...]
But I confess to being a little disappointed, as my knowledge of that great woman is not one
jot increased by anything Miss R. has written. I prefer Mrs Gaskell's work as being more
versatile; Mr Reid's as being more vivacious, and Mr Bayne as being more stern and real
[goes on to criticise 'the constant mention of Branwell Bronte' as 'the great blot in the book']
[...]
'It's a pity she did not make her [Emily Bronte] more of a psychological study, and gone a
little deeper into the recesses of her mind [...] We owe Miss Robinson a debt of gratitude if
only for the beautiful poem she has unearthed and given in at the end of her work,
commencing "No coward Soul is mine" —
'It is new to me, at least I don't remember it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sidney Biddell Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue, Northcourt Avenue, 25th April 1945
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
5. Alice Joselin introduced the subject of the evening with a biographical study of
the Brontė family. Contrary to her expressed idea that she could do little more
than recite a list of dates, Alice Joselin drew for us a vivid picture of the life at
Haworth Rectory and the way in which the three sisters took the literary world by
storm.
6. After adjourning for refreshment we turned our attentions to a study of the
works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontė. First Margaret Dilks read from
Vil[l]ette the description of Mme. Rachel, the famous actress. Since this passage
is the only contribution Charlotte Brontė is allowed to make to the Oxford Book of
English Prose, it is presumably considered great by someone who should be
qualified to judge. But when the reader had finished, the only audible comment
from this learned gathering was Can someone tell me what all that means?
7. F. E. Pollard then gave us the benefit of his discerning criticism of the works of
these writers. Describing himself as of a naturally romantic & sentimental turn of
mind (cheers and prolonged applause) he championed Jane Eyre and Shirley.
There followed a lively discussion in which nearly all members took part. The
excessive wordiness of which both Emily & Charlotte are sometimes guilty, was
attributed to the bad influence of the continent on the Englishmans [sic!] natural
restraint. Several members of the fair sex expressed a distaste for the horrors of
Wuthering Heights, one even going so far as to suggest that the author was
probably mad. Cyril Langford, reading from a newspaper article, put forward an
interesting theory that the book was the natural psychological reaction of one
whose life was mainly occupied in household duties; and Thomas Hopkins crowned
all by telling us that he had once been presented with Wuthering Heights as a
Sunday School prize. Cyril Langford also drew our attention to Jane Eyres
description of her own paintings, which were clearly the forerunners of surrealism.
Other readings given were:-
Howard Smith from Wuthering Heights[,]
Rosamund Wallis from Shirley[,]
& Howard Smith from The Gondal Poems[.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: several unnamed members of the XII Book Club Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue, Northcourt Avenue, 25th April 1945
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
5. Alice Joselin introduced the subject of the evening with a biographical study of
the Brontė family. Contrary to her expressed idea that she could do little more
than recite a list of dates, Alice Joselin drew for us a vivid picture of the life at
Haworth Rectory and the way in which the three sisters took the literary world by
storm.
6. After adjourning for refreshment we turned our attentions to a study of the
works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontė. First Margaret Dilks read from
Vil[l]ette the description of Mme. Rachel, the famous actress. Since this passage
is the only contribution Charlotte Brontė is allowed to make to the Oxford Book of
English Prose, it is presumably considered great by someone who should be
qualified to judge. But when the reader had finished, the only audible comment
from this learned gathering was Can someone tell me what all that means?
7. F. E. Pollard then gave us the benefit of his discerning criticism of the works of
these writers. Describing himself as of a naturally romantic & sentimental turn of
mind (cheers and prolonged applause) he championed Jane Eyre and Shirley.
There followed a lively discussion in which nearly all members took part. The
excessive wordiness of which both Emily & Charlotte are sometimes guilty, was
attributed to the bad influence of the continent on the Englishmans [sic!] natural
restraint. Several members of the fair sex expressed a distaste for the horrors of
Wuthering Heights, one even going so far as to suggest that the author was
probably mad. Cyril Langford, reading from a newspaper article, put forward an
interesting theory that the book was the natural psychological reaction of one
whose life was mainly occupied in household duties; and Thomas Hopkins crowned
all by telling us that he had once been presented with Wuthering Heights as a
Sunday School prize. Cyril Langford also drew our attention to Jane Eyres
description of her own paintings, which were clearly the forerunners of surrealism.
Other readings given were:-
Howard Smith from Wuthering Heights[,]
Rosamund Wallis from Shirley[,]
& Howard Smith from The Gondal Poems[.]'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22 Cintra Avenue, Northcourt Avenue, 25th April 1945
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
[...]
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
5. Alice Joselin introduced the subject of the evening with a biographical study of
the Brontė family. Contrary to her expressed idea that she could do little more
than recite a list of dates, Alice Joselin drew for us a vivid picture of the life at
Haworth Rectory and the way in which the three sisters took the literary world by
storm.
6. After adjourning for refreshment we turned our attentions to a study of the
works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontė. First Margaret Dilks read from
Vil[l]ette the description of Mme. Rachel, the famous actress. Since this passage
is the only contribution Charlotte Brontė is allowed to make to the Oxford Book of
English Prose, it is presumably considered great by someone who should be
qualified to judge. But when the reader had finished, the only audible comment
from this learned gathering was Can someone tell me what all that means?
7. F. E. Pollard then gave us the benefit of his discerning criticism of the works of
these writers. Describing himself as of a naturally romantic & sentimental turn of
mind (cheers and prolonged applause) he championed Jane Eyre and Shirley.
There followed a lively discussion in which nearly all members took part. The
excessive wordiness of which both Emily & Charlotte are sometimes guilty, was
attributed to the bad influence of the continent on the Englishmans [sic!] natural
restraint. Several members of the fair sex expressed a distaste for the horrors of
Wuthering Heights, one even going so far as to suggest that the author was
probably mad. Cyril Langford, reading from a newspaper article, put forward an
interesting theory that the book was the natural psychological reaction of one
whose life was mainly occupied in household duties; and Thomas Hopkins crowned
all by telling us that he had once been presented with Wuthering Heights as a
Sunday School prize. Cyril Langford also drew our attention to Jane Eyres
description of her own paintings, which were clearly the forerunners of surrealism.
Other readings given were:-
Howard Smith from Wuthering Heights[,]
Rosamund Wallis from Shirley[,]
& Howard Smith from The Gondal Poems[.]'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
'I have now struck better ground in Charlotte Bronte's "Wuthering Heights", which although
melodramatic like all her books, shapes very well indeed.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'During my holiday read again Wuthering Heights . . but one can
every quite recapture the first horror of contacting Heathcliff and
the voice at the window.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vere Hodgson Print: Book
'Most army hospitals acquired a varied collection of
books and this ward was no exception. With plenty of
time to pass in bed I naturally spent a lot of it
reading, and browsed on a literary diet ranging from
Le Queux and Edgar Wallace, to Emily Brontė and
Turgenev.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Geoffrey Ratcliff Husbands Print: Book
M. is here deep in Wuthering Heights, with the
ladies singing hard in the next room.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margery Morris Print: Book
