'In 1926 [Catherine McMullen] was herself a workhouse laundress, struggling to improve her mind by reading T.P. and Cassell's Weekly. The magazine was full of literary gossip that made her aspire to be a writer, but she had no idea which books to read until she came across Elinor Glyn's The Career of Catherine Bush. In this story of a romance between a duke and a secretary, the secretary is advised to read the Letters of Lord Chesterfield to his Son. Catherine McMullen visited a public library for the first time in her life and borrowed the book: "And here began my education. With Lord Chesterfield I read my first mythology. I learned my first history and geography. With Lord Chesterfield I went travelling the world. I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake around three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed, not just talked..." ... He launched her into a lifetime course of reading, beginning with Chaucer in Middle English, moving on to Erasmus, Donne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and even Finnegan's Wake.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine McMullen Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth, on visit to Catherine Clarkson at Bury St Edmunds, to William Wordsworth and Sara Hutchinson, 14 August 1810: 'In the afternoon we looked over half the drawings from Chaucer, and read as much of the prologue ... the next day looked over the rest of the drawings to my great delight, and read the Knight's Tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 15 November 1801: 'We sate by the fire and read Chaucer (Thomson, Mary read) and Bishop Hall.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 24 November 1801: 'A rainy morning ... I read a little of Chaucer, prepared the goose for dinner, and then we all walked out.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 2 December 1801: 'I read the Tale of Phoebus and the Crow ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 6 December 1801: 'In the afternoon we sate by the fire: I read Chaucer aloud, and Mary read the first canto of The Fairy Queen.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 9 December 1801: 'I read Palamon and Arcite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: 'When we were at Thomas Ashburner's on Sunday Peggy talked about the [drunken] Queen of Patterdale ... We sate snugly round the fire. I read to them the Tale of Custance and the Syrian monarch, also some of the Prologues. It is the Man of Lawe's tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Monday 21 December 1801: 'When we were at Thomas Ashburner's on Sunday Peggy talked about the [drunken] Queen of Patterdale ... We sate snugly round the fire. I read to them the Tale of Custance and the Syrian monarch, also some of the Prologues. It is the Man of Lawe's tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Thursday 24 December 1801: 'We sate comfortably round the fire in the Evening, and read Chaucer.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wordsworth Family Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Saturday 26 December 1801: 'After tea we sate by the fire comfortably. I read aloud The Miller's Tale.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 30 October 1802: '... [William Wordsworth and Stoddart] surprized us by their arrival at four o'clock in the afternoon ... after tea S[toddart]. read in Chaucer to us.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: ?John Stoddart Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 11 January 1803: 'Mary read the Prologue to Chaucer's tales to me in the morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 11 January 1803: 'Before tea I sate 2 hours in the parlour. Read part of The Knight's Tale with exquisite delight.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
'Nottinghamshire collier G.A.W. Tomlinson volunteered for repair shifts on weekends, when he could earn time-and-a-half and read on the job. On Sundays, "I sat there on my toolbox, half a mile from the surface, one mile from the nearest church and seemingly hundreds of miles from God, reading the Canterbury Tales, Lamb's Essays, Darwin's Origin of Species, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, or anything that I could manage to get hold of". That could be hazardous: once, when he should have been minding a set of rail switches, he was so absorbed in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village that he allowed tubs full of coal to crash into empties'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: G.A.W. Tomlinson Print: Book
"H. M. Swanwick, in the late 1870s, absorbed what she could from any available scientific books and medical journals, and puzzled over the Bible, Shakespeare, Chaucer, La Fontaine."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: H. M. Swanwick Print: Book
'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis Print: Book
'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
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Masefield habitually purchased a book each Friday evening and read it over the weekend. Among the first purchases was a seventy-five cent copy of Chaucer; and that evening, as he recalled, "I stretched myself on my bed, and began to read 'The Parliament of Fowls'; and with the first lines entered into a world of poetry until then unknown to me". As a result, Masefield's study of poetry deepened, and Chaucer, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats became his mentors. Shelley converted the impressionable youth to vegetarianism....Unfortunately [he] overdid vegetarianism by abjuring milk; and, weak from lack of protein, he finally gave up the regimen'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
"In 1617 the Countess [of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery] noted recreational books that she was reading:
"'Began to have Mr. Sandy's book read to me about the Government of the Turks.
"'Rivers used to read to me in Montaigne's Plays [Essays] and Moll Neville in the Fairy Queen.
"'I sat and read much in the Turkish History and Chaucer.
"'The 12th and 13th I spent most of the time in playing Glecko and hearing Moll Neville read the Arcadia.'"
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery Print: Book
'The books [Uncle George] read to us were all in the romantic vein: Shakespeare's "Histories", Chaucer, Percy's "Reliques", Scott's novels'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Darwin Print: Book
'I did "The Knightes Tale" all my prep. time and like it'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Finished "The Knightes Tale" and am now embarking on "Luria" - it's pretty awful."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Repeated Longfellow?s Psalm of Life. Read three first chapters of Chaucer's Prologue. I had been depressed and ill all the morning, a little intercourse with minds seems to refresh me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber Print: Book
'Finished Depping's "Juifs au Moyen Age". Reading Chaucer, to study English. Also, reading on acoustics, musical instruments etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.] Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
[Read] 'Chaucer's Prologue'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
Extracted by G. C. Moore Smith from J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, "Memoranda on the Tragedy of Hamlet"(1879): 'There was once in existence a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, 1598, with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey, one of those notes being in the following terms: -- "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespear's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark have it in them to please the wiser sort."'
Century: 1500-1599 / 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Gabriel Harvey Print: Book
[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 II
The 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
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Unknown
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
'S. reads the first book of Troilus & Cressida aloud in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to May Sarton, 2 February 1939:
'I have been so steeped in modern manuscripts that I was losing all sense that one differed from
another. I am reading Chaucer and hope in a year to have recovered my palate.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'In a little while came the books . [..] I've read "Vathek" at once. C'est tres bien. What an infernal imagination! The style is cold and I do not see in the work the immense promise as set forth by the introduction. Chaucer I have dipped into, reading aloud as you advised. I am afraid I am not English enough to appreciate fully the father of English literature. Moreover I am generally insensible to verse.
Thereupon came "The Stealing of the Mare" This I delight in. I've read it at once and right through. It is quite inspiring most curious and altogether fascinating.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
Tuesday 15 November 1938: 'My one quiet evening since Thursday. Read Chaucer.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Saturday 29 April 1939: 'Yesterday I went out [...] to walk in London [makes various observations] [...] So into Cannon St. Bought a paper with Hitler's speech. Read it on top of Bus. Inconclusive -- cut up in Stop Press. Everyone reading it -- even newspaper sellers, a great proof of interest [...] Read Chaucer. Enjoyed it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson:
'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...]
'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos [...]
Petrarch [...] furnished a not dissimilar instance, in the ethereally-beautiful lines on the death of Laura ("Trionfa della Morte," Cap.1) [quotes six lines] [...] I remember still the tenderness with which he dwelt on the words, the sigh of delight -- almost, perhaps, the tears -- that came naturally to the sensitive soul, as he ended [...]
'And Petrarch's own contemporary English admirer [...] supplied Tennyson with another favourite passage; that in the "Knight's Tale," where Arcite, dying, commends his soul as a legacy to his love Emilie [quotes five lines]
'It is with a doubly pathetic echo that the tone, amorously lingering, which [sic] this dear friend always rendered Chaucer's last line ["Alone withouten any compagnie"] now returns to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
6 July 1853:
'Read three first characters of Chaucer's Prologue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Guest Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 20 October 1797: 'In Chaucer I for ever find the ribible — but nothing else & no explanation of that. now tho I have used one word which nobody understands. the jazerent of double mail — I shall not take the same liberty with another. jazerina often occurs in the Guerras Civiles de Granada.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'Mrs Edminson & C. E. Stansfield also read from the Canterbury Tales - The Prioress' Tale & the Rhyme of Sir Topas (Fit i) [i.e. section 1] respectively'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'Mrs Edminson & C. E. Stansfield also read from the Canterbury Tales - The Prioress' Tale & the Rhyme of Sir Topas (Fit i) [i.e. Section 1] respectively'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Edminson Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Wallis Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ernest E. Unwin Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamund Wallis Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: K Evans Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith Print: Book
'Chaucer's life & work were then described & illustrated by the following: A Paper on the Life & Times by Charles E. Stansfield : Chaucer's Poetry described by C. I. Evans : the Knight's Tale read by Violet Wallis : Chaucer's Prologue was dealt with in considerable detail & after an introduction by C.I. Evans the following read extracts from this poem: Mrs Rawlings, Mrs Robson, Mrs Evans, Rosamund Wallis, Alfred Rawlings, Howard R. Smith & the Secretary.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans Print: Book
"I am writing this on the Maid's tragedy which I have read since tea with great pleasure -
Besides this
volume of Beaumont & Fletcher - there are on the table two volumes of chaucer and a new work
of Tom
Moores call'd 'Tom Cribb's memorial to Congress' - nothing in it - These are trifles...
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
'A Meeting held at Grove House May 3rd H. B. Lawson in the chair
Min 1. Minutes of last Read and approved
[...]
[Min] 4 The Subject of the evening "Humour" was then introduced by H. B. Lawson who fascinated us by his thoughtful attempts to
define his subject[.] An interesting discussion followed in which the disputants backed their opinions by literary allusion and we
were led to wonder if Humour flowed from F E Pollards heart & wit from R H Robsons head.
After Supper the Club settled down to enjoy the following selections chosen to represent English Humour in literature down the
Ages[:]
Prologue of Chaucers Canterbury Tales The Prioress & Wife of Bath read by Howard R. Smith
Shakespeares Henry IV The Men in Buckram read by R. H Robson Fallstaff
[ditto] S. A. Reynolds Poins
[ditto] C. E. Stansfield Prince Hall [sic]
[ditto] Geo Burrow Gadshill
Jane Austin Pride & Prejudice Mr. Collins proposes
[ditto] Mrs Robson
Charles Dickens David Copperfield Mrs Micawber on her husbands career[?] Geo Burrow
Charles Lamb A Letter Alfred Rawlings
Lewis Carrols Alice in Wonderland The Lobster Quadrill Mary Reynolds
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat Uncle Podger hangs a picture F. E. Pollard
Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tales "George" recited by Howard R. Smith'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Howard Smith
(1) 'With the Chaucer I am most awfully bucked: it is in the very best Everyman style —
lovely paper, strong boards, and — aren't you envious — not one but two bits of tissue
paper.... As to the contents ... they have proved even better than I hoped: I have only had
time so far to read the "Prologue" and "The Knight's Tale" (that's Palamon and Arcite you
know), but I adore them. The tale is a perfect poem of chivalry, isn't it?' (2) 'I have now read
all the tales of Chaucer which I ever expected to read, and feel that I may consider the book
as finished: some of them are quite impossible. On the whole, with one or two splendid
exceptions such as the Knight's and the Franklin's tales, he is disappointing when you get to
know him. He has most of the faults of the Middle Ages — garrulity and coarseness — without
their romantic charm which we find in the "Green Knight" or in Malory.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I am also reading Chaucer's minor poems ("World's Classics", a scrubby edition but the only one
I can find) and am half way through "The House of Fame", a dream poem half funny & half
fantastic that I like very much. But the print, tho' clear, is very small.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
Except Shakespeare, who grew from childhood as
part of myself, nearly every classic has come with
this same shock of almost intolerable enthusiasm:
Virgil, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Dante, Chaucer
and Milton and Goethe, Leopardi and Racine, Plato
and Pascal and St Augustine, they have appeared,
widely scattered through the years, every one like
a 'rock in a thirsty land', that makes the world
look different in its shadow.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Unknown
