"The heart knows its own bitterness + it is enough. Je sens moncover, et je connais les hommes. Je ne suis fait comme [...] Rousseau's confessions, volume and page, first"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Lister Print: Book
" reading Rousseau to my Sally."
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler
" From one till three reading Rousseau to the joy of my Life."
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler
" From five till Ten read Rousseau (finished the 7th tome) to my Sally.
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler
'[Jack Ashley] was less prepared for Ruskin [College] than most of the students, having read only two books since leaving school: Jack London's The Iron Heel and the regulations of the Widnes Town Council. But principal Lionel Elvin "appreciated the profound dificulties facing working class students": "When I stumbled through the intricacies of the political theories of Marx, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke and T.H. Green, he marked my work frankly yet gave encouragement... He was an excellent teacher, genuinely interested in discussing ideas and persuading students to express their own"
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Ashley Print: Book
'she thinks Rousseau "the most dangerous writer I ever read", his work "of so bad tendency that, after a few trials, I have determined never to look into any thing he should publish".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter Print: Book
'the book that prompted [Mary Wollstonecraft's] fullest comment was Rousseau's "Emile". It was bound to appeal to her; it was a treatise on education, a metaphysical essay - at times almost a sermon - and a sentimental novel, all in one'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
'I am now reading Rousseau's "Emile", and love his paradoxes. He chuses a common capacity to educate - and gives as a reason, that a genius will educate itself - however he rambles into a chimerical world into which I have too often [wand]ered - and draws the usual conclusion that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wollstonecraft Print: Book
'He consumed works of western philosophy, from Rousseau to Wyndham Lewis. All this he added to his diet of sexology - Freud, Remy de Gourmont, de Sade and Krafft-Ebing. And with the Mediterranean in mind, he read D.H. Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia" and Norman Douglas's "South Wind"'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
'I return the first two volumes of Julia with many thanks - It seems to me, that the most proper way of testifying my gratitude to the amiable Jean Jacques for the pleasure he has afforded me, is to do what in me lies to extend the circle of his admirers - I shall begin with you - Do read this book -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Bailie Welsh Print: Book
'I have finished Julia - Divine Julia! What a finshed picture of most sublime virtue!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Bailie Welsh 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 IIThe 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 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
[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
[italics to indicate PB Shelley's hand] 'In the evening I walk alone a long way by the lake. Read Julie all day [end italics]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read ten pages of Quintius Curtius and Rousseau's reveries'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read twelve page[s] of Curt. write - & read the reveries of Rousseau - S. reads Pliny's Letters'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'I read Reveries and Adele & Teodore de Mad.me de Genlis & Shelley reads Pliny's letters'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Shelley's 24th birthday. Write read [underlined] tableau de famille [end underlining] - go out with Shelley in the boat & read aloud to him the fourth book of Virgil - after dinner we go up to Diodati but return soon - I read Curt. with Shelley and finish the 1st vol. after which we go out in the boat to set up the baloon but there is too much wind. We set it up from the land but it takes fire as soon as it is up - I finish the Reveries of Rousseau. Shelley reads and finishes Pliny's letters. & begins the panegyric of Trajan'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ewing April 18, 1779 'I do not know whether you will view this in the same light, but I think it is the most affecting and heroic instance of true friendship I have met with in real life. One can?t help comparing it with the lively and impressive portrait Rousseau draws of Clara and Eloisa.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry January 2 1794 'Then I have not put B. to school , or done half of what I meant.- I have seen Mary Wollstonecroft?s book, which is so run after here, that there is no keeping it long enough to read it leisurely, though one had leisure. It has produced no other convictions in my mind, but that of the authors possessing considerable abilities, and greatly misapplying them. To refute her arguments would be to write another and a larger book; for there is more pains and skill required to refute ill-founded assertions, than to make them. [and again on p. 272] 'Where a woman had those superior powers of mind to which we give the name genius, she will exert them under all disadvantages: Jean Jacques says truly, genius will educate itself, and, like flame, burst through all obstructions ?. [p. 268-277 is a criticism of Mary Wollstonecroft's work ]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'In the evening read the letters of Emile'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'finish the letters of Emile and read a part of Clarissa Harlowe'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'read Vol VII of Clarissa - Shelley reads the letters of Emile'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Tacitus and Julie'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Julie - S reads Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'write the trans. of Spinoza from S's dictation; translate Cupid & Psyche - read Tacitus and Rousseau's confessions'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Rousseau's letters.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Rousseau's letters'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Begin Julie'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Finish Julie. Read the Fable of the Bees.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Emile'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Homer - Tacitus - Emile & 1 Canto of Dante'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'In my own day all mothers strictly forbade their daughters to read Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise", and all daughters, of course, longed to read nothing so much. I knew one young lady who owned to me that she stole a reading of it standing on the top steps of her father's library-ladder; and another, who procured it and carried it into the country with her on her wedding day, as the first fruits of being her own mistress. Yet within these few years I happened to hear a girl of very warm feeling, enthusiastic, romantic, just the person whose head it would have turned of old, declare she had tried to read it, but been so disgusted that she threw it away before she got through half the first volume'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'In my own day all mothers strictly forbade their daughters to read Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise", and all daughters, of course, longed to read nothing so much. I knew one young lady who owned to me that she stole a reading of it standing on the top steps of her father's library-ladder; and another, who procured it and carried it into the country with her on her wedding day, as the first fruits of being her own mistress. Yet within these few years I happened to hear a girl of very warm feeling, enthusiastic, romantic, just the person whose head it would have turned of old, declare she had tried to read it, but been so disgusted that she threw it away before she got through half the first volume'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'In my own day all mothers strictly forbade their daughters to read Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise", and all daughters, of course, longed to read nothing so much. I knew one young lady who owned to me that she stole a reading of it standing on the top steps of her father's library-ladder; and another, who procured it and carried it into the country with her on her wedding day, as the first fruits of being her own mistress. Yet within these few years I happened to hear a girl of very warm feeling, enthusiastic, romantic, just the person whose head it would have turned of old, declare she had tried to read it, but been so disgusted that she threw it away before she got through half the first volume'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'This violence [of Dr Johnson against Rousseau] seemed very strange to me, who had read many of Rousseau's animated writings with great pleasure, and even edification; had been much pleased with his society, and was just come from the Continent, where he was very generally admired. Nor can I yet allow that he deserves the very severe censure which Johnson pronounced upon him. His absurd preference of savage to civilized life and other singularities are proofs rather of a defect in his understanding than of any depravity in his heart. And notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion which many worthy men have expressed of his "Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard," I cannot help admiring it as the performance of a man full of sincere reverential submission to Divine Mystery, though beset with perplexing doubts: a state of mind to be viewed with pity rather than with anger.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'This violence [of Dr Johnson against Rousseau] seemed very strange to me, who had read many of Rousseau's animated writings with great pleasure, and even edification; had been much pleased with his society, and was just come from the Continent, where he was very generally admired. Nor can I yet allow that he deserves the very severe censure which Johnson pronounced upon him. His absurd preference of savage to civilized life and other singularities are proofs rather of a defect in his understanding than of any depravity in his heart. And notwithstanding the unfavourable opinion which many worthy men have expressed of his "Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard," I cannot help admiring it as the performance of a man full of sincere reverential submission to Divine Mystery, though beset with perplexing doubts: a state of mind to be viewed with pity rather than with anger.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'Rousseau says that the Man who finding his Affairs embarrassed - puts an end to his own Life; is like one who finding his House in Disorder sets it on Fire in stead of setting it to rights.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I myself like Smollet's Novels better than Fielding's; the perpetual Parody teizes one; - there is more Rapidity and Spirit in the Scotsman: though both of them knew the Husk of Life perfectly well - & for the Kernel - you must go to either Richardson or Rousseau'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox, Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Collins, 12-13 January 1793: 'Whether or not man has the stain of original sin I leave to theologians & metaphysicians. That education tends to give it him I do not even doubt. Rousseau's plan is too visionary — it supposes such unremitted attention in the tutor & such natural virtue in the pupil that I doubt its practability of this however when we read Emilius (an occupation I look forward to with pleasure) we will freely determine. Madame Brulerck (late Genlis) appears to me to have struck out a path equally new & excellent — the Emilius of L Homme de la Nature existed only in his imagination. but the two sons of Phillipe Egalitè are living proofs of her capacity.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Unknown
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 31 July - 6 August 1793: 'I have just met with a passage in Rousseau which expresses some of my religious opinions better than I could do it myself. "Je ne trouve point de plus doux hommage a la divinite, que l’admiration enuette qu’excite la contemplation de ses œuvres. Je ne puis comprendre comment des campagnards, et sur-tout des solitaires, peuvent ne pas avoir de foi; comment leur ame ne s’eleve pas cent fois le jour avec extase a l’auteur des merveilles qui les frappent. Dans ma chambre je prie plus rarement & séchement, mais a l’aspect d’un beau paysage, je me sens emu. Une vielle femme, pour toute priere, ne savoit dire que ô! L’eveque lui dit: Bonne femme continuez de prier ainsi, votre priere vaut mieux que les notres. — cette meilleure priere est aussi la mienne." — '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6-8 November 1793: 'Were men what they ought to be — Rousseau would be canonized for a greater saint than any in the calendar. Read his Julia & tell me whence may we learn the most instructive lesson from the mistress of St Preux or the temptation of St Anthony. My comparison of the Man of Nature with Richardson would have been branded with the epithets of immoral atheistical & licentious. Clodius accuset moechos! Xtianity is less understood & less practised in this country than in the desarts of Arabia! Let him who is innocent cast the first stone was the judgement of the most moral of philosophers, to use no superior title.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 22 September 1797: 'Do you know Rousseaus Levite of Ephraim? if not — you will find a poem that has not a word too much.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Book
Harriet, Countess Granville, to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, 24 September 1810:
'I am in the middle of [Rousseau's] "Emile." I think parts of it excellent, and the foundation of
most of what has been since written on the subject of education. The parts I do not like seem
to me more ridiculous than immoral [...] I have, however, only read one volume [...] He has
too much of looking up to the sky with larmes dans les yeux, which, though it may be a part
and certainly is the consequence of sincere and ardent piety -- I mean that sort of grateful
emotion one feels in all the pleasures of fine weather and the works of Nature -- is but a sad
loophole or dependance for those who consider it as the whole.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Countess Granville Print: Book
