'Farell Lee Bevan's Peep of Day (759,000 copies in print by 1888) supplied him with the frame of a totalistic religious ideology: "It was from these pages that I got my first idea of the moral foundations of the universe, was handed the first key with which to unlock the mysteries of the world in which I found myself. These little books served the purpose of an index or filing system; a framework of iron dogma, if you like, providing an orderly arrangement of the world and its history for the young mind, under two main categories, Good and Evil". But Jones also attended a board school, where he found "salvation" in an old cupboard of books presented by the local MP. They were mainly volumes of voyages and natural history, "which took a Rhymney boy away into the realms of wonder over the seas to the Malay Archipelago, to Abyssinia, to the sources of the Nile and the Albert Nyanza, to the curiosities of natural history, piloted by James Bruce, Samuel Baker and Frank Buckland".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jones Print: Book
'A Scottish flax dresser gained his "first or incipient idea of localities and distances" when he was assigned to read aloud at work from Anson, Cook, Bruce and Mungo Park'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: "Jacques", a flax dresser Print: Book
'as with history, women use their reading of travels to interrogate an androcentric concept of heroism. Elizabeth Montagu felt "surfeited" with what she thought the pointless explorations of Cook or Bruce: "of what use is this discovery of the source of the Nile?"'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Montagu Print: Book
'About this time I read also the narratives of some eminent navigators and travellers; among the former were those of Cook, P?rouse and Bougainville; of the latter I chiefly remember those of Bruce, Le Vaillant and Weld. Mr. Weld's narrative so deeply interested me, as to have well nigh been the occasion of my emigrating to the United States or Canada. The desire of seeing those countries which was excited thereby remained with me for some years: it was the cause of my reading several works descriptive of North America and the condition of its inhabitants.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
