the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Giovanni Battista Belzoni : Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, &c.

'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

Giovanni Battista Belzoni : Travels

'Laura's greatest find was a battered old copy of Belzoni's "Travels" propping open somebody's pantry window. When she asked for the loan of it, it was generously given to her, and she had the intense pleasure of exploring the burial chambers of the pyramids with her author.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Flora Thompson      Print: Book

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