'On the facing verso of the MS [of Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff], [Wordsworth] ... copies out Athalie I.ii.278-82, 292-94 ... '
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Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Thomas Moore on encountering W[ordsworth] in Paris on 24 Oct. 1820: 'A young Frenchman called in, and it was amusing to hear him and Wordsworth at cross purposes on the subject of "Athalie"; Wordsworth saying that he did not wish to see it acted, as it would never come up to the high imagination he had formed in reading it ... '
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Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
?We saw at Brussels two of the best Paris actors, and Madame Talma. The play was Racine?s Andromache (initiated in England as the Distressed Mother.) Madame Talma played Andromache and her husband Orestes. .. We read the play in the morning, an excellent precaution, otherwise the novelty of the French mode of declamation would have set my comprehension at defiance.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth Print: Book
'This evening the fine trajedy of Racine "Andromaque" was read I did not hear all the play but I have read it before'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth (Betsey) Wynne Print: Unknown
'In the evening I wrote to Mary Montalban and to her husband, and we read "Les Plaideurs" which made us laugh like fools'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Wynne and others Print: Unknown
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, c. December 1816:
'I have finished "Telemaque," and have read one, or two of Racines plays, which I like very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 8 September 1830:
'I have been reading lately with my brothers some of Racine's plays [...] It is several years
since I read them by myself; and if they disgusted me then, they are intolerable to me now.
The French have no part or lot in poetry [goes on to complain of what she perceives to be
excessive formality and orderliness of French neoclassical poetry]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett and younger Moulton-Barrett brothers Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd, 8 September 1830:
'I have been reading lately with my brothers some of Racine's plays [...] It is several years
since I read them by myself; and if they disgusted me then, they are intolerable to me now.
The French have no part or lot in poetry [goes on to complain of what she perceives to be
excessive formality and orderliness of French neoclassical poetry]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 1 February 1838:
'I have just been reading Racine's "Letters," and Boileau's. How much one should like both, if it were not for their slavish servile devotion to the king (and I think it was real), and to that odious woman Madame de Maintenon.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Wednesday 23 October 1929: 'Since I have been back [apparently to London, from Sussex home] I have read Virginia Water (a sweet white grape); God; -- all founded, & teased & spun out upon one quite simple & usual psychological experience; but the mans no poet & cant make one see; all his sentences are like steel lines on an engraving. I am reading Racine, have bought La Fontaine, & so intend to make my sidelong approach to French literature, circling & brooding'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I have been reading John Racine: it is very standard − damnd[sic] standard, I beg your pardon.[…] I like John Racine, however; the noise is very pleasing and as unintelligent and soothing as a mill wheel; occasionally too there are verses of a dignity! − Verses with Versailles wigs − pageant verses − like a Roman Triumph.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 29 January 1918:
'I have been reading Racine and Claudel.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Conrad's face would cloud over. He would snatch up a volume of Racine and read half a dozen lines.'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad 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
