'Weaver-novelist William Holt extolled the standard greats ("Noble Carlyle; virtuous Tolstoi; wise Bacon; jolly Rabelais; towering Plato...") and, having taught himself German, memorized Schiller while working at the looms. But he did not limit himself to classics: "I read omnivorously, greedily, promiscuously", from dime novels and G.A. Henty to Hardy and Conrad. Holt disparaged popular authors such as Ethel M. Dell and Elinor Glyn for "peddling vulgar narcotics", yet he was closely attuned to the mass reading public. His own autobiography sold a quarter of a million copes and he once owned a fleet of bookmobiles. He reconciled taste with populism through this logic: though most readers consume a certain amount of junk, it does them no harm because they recognize it as junk'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Holt Print: Book
'"Reading for me then was haphazard, unguided, practically uncritical", recalled boilermaker's daughter Marjory Todd. "I slipped all too easily into those traps for the half-baked - books about books, the old 'John O' London's Weekly', chit-chat of one kind or another". Yet in a few years she had advanced to "Moby Dick", "Lord Jim", "Crime and Punishment", and "Wuthering Heights".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marjory Todd Print: Book
'As a ?1-a-week warehouse clerk in the early 1920s, H.E. Bates spent most of the workday with Conrad, Hardy, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Ernest Bates Print: Book
[the 'intellectual' clique within the Clarion Scouts, including Edwin Muir] "followed the literary and intellectual development of the time, discovering such writers as Bergson, Sorel, Havelock Ellis, Galsworthy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, Joyce and Lawrence, the last two being contributed by me, for I had seen them mentioned in the New Age by Ezra Pound".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'Conrad?s book, though of course very distinguished, is not as good as his last.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Henry James, in 1 November 1906 letter to Joseph Conrad, writes of having just read and admired "The Mirror of the Sea".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
Henry James to Hugh Walpole, 5 February 1914: 'I have the volume [one by Walpole] (since last night), and shall attack it as soon as I finish Conrad's "Chance". I have so nearly done this that I shall probably proceed tonight, in bed, to Walpole's Certainty ["The Duchess of Wrexe"].''
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James Print: Book
'[Around 1912-13, when she began her association with Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] Charlotte [Mew] [...] was reading Flaubert as always, Chekhov, Conrad and Verlaine'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew Print: Unknown
'On the wall at the side of the chimney Dad put up the bookshelves which Dodie began to fill with secondhand penny books. Over the years we had Conrad and Wodehouse, Eric Linklater and Geoffrey Farnol, Edgar Wallace, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and a host of others, good, bad and awful, and we read the lot, some of them over and over.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: family of Rose Gamble Print: Book
'Wednesday, 24th March,
Today would have been deadly dull but for the Lincoln. Queer how so many of us get caught up in these periodical excitements. I neither know anything or care anything about horse-racing, yet I was looking for a news-boy to know the winner within five minutes of it?s being run. Power of the Press.
?King of Clubs? 100 ? 1, with Donoghue ????
Preparing this evening for Club annual meeting.
Read ? ?Almayer?s Folly? (J. Conrad) - Smith?s book. A dismal soul ? Conrad.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'That Conrad book is magnificent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'My Dear Wells, I owe you a good turn for pointing out Conrad to me. I remember I got his first book, Almayer?s Folly, to review with a batch of others from Unwin, & feeling at the time rather bored (you know the feeling?I get through 50 or 60 novels a month for two papers) I simply didn?t read it at all?wrote a vague & discreet par. & left it.'
I have just read his new book 'The Nigger of the Narcissus', which has moved me to enthusiasm. Where did the man pick up that style, & that synthetic way of gathering up a general impression & flinging it at you? Not only his style, but his attitude, affected me deeply. He is so consciously an artist.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I do not think "Romance" is good. In fact it isn?t & I don?t care who knows it. Ever read Dostoevsky?s Crime and Punishment? English translation damnable; but it is a novel. I?m just reading it again.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I read 'Higuerota' again not long since, I always think of that book as 'Higuerota', the said mountain being the principal personage in the story, When I first read it I thought it the finest novel of this generation (bar none), and I am still thinking so.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'. . . when I recall the quiet domestic scenes behind the shop in 'The Secret Agent' here is rather the sort of thing I reckon to handle myself?but I respectfully retire from the comparison. What I chiefly like in your books of 'Reminiscences' is the increasing sardonic quality of them?the rich veins of dark and glittering satire and sarcasm. There was a lot of it, too, in the latter half of 'Under Western Eyes'. I must tell you that I think the close of ?The Secret Sharer? about as fine as anything you?ve ever done. Overwhelmingly strong and beautiful.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I do not think that "Victory" is anything like equal to "Chance". In fact it is not first-rate Conrad, "Chance" is. "Bealby" I have never read. Wells sends me all his books; but he didn’t send "Bealby" along, and I lost the list and didn’t get it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'I do not think that "Victory" is anything like equal to "Chance". In fact it is not first-rate Conrad, "Chance" is. "Bealby" I have never read. Wells sends me all his books; but he didn’t send "Bealby" along, and I lost the list and didn’t get it.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Robert Trevelyan, 23 February 1920:
'Mother is reading "The Arrow of Lead" as she calls it, and finds it very slow.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alice Clara Forster Print: Book
'Winifred did not care, for she was reading Conrad's "Suspense" - a noble and spacious book which made the early nineteenth century come alive for her in a clear yet faint glow like candlelight."
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
'If one may judge from the young men and women in their twenties who call here - one must accept that exceptionally few of them have any interest in serious or solid reading; indeed, many seem to read hardly anything at all. Last night, for example, M- admitted that she had never read a book through; and her boyfriend claimed that once as a test of will-power he had forced himself to read through three books by Conrad. It would certainly appear that the interwar years had produced a generation restless, and recreated by light amusements.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style.
C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim
Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly
Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon
Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans and Henry Marriage Wallis Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style.
C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim
Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly
Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon
Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Florence Reynolds Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style.
C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim
Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly
Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon
Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The subject before the meeting was Joseph Conrad. R.H. Robson introduced the subject with an interesting essay & a number of readings were given to illustrate his descriptive power & his style.
C.I. Evans helped by H.M. Wallis read from Lord Jim
Mrs Reynolds - Almayer's Folly
Mrs Rawlings - Typhoon
Joseph Conrad seemed to have been known to but few of the club before the meeting, but certainly as a result members will turn to his writings with considerable [interest] and find possibly that a new star has sailed into their literary sky. If so one object of the club, to be a literary telescope, will have been achieved.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
Linking a childhood memory of a great storm with a
subsequent reading of Conrad's work:
'The wind blowing from this quarter is not
like the south-west wind of the North Atlantic and
Britain, a warm wind laden with moisture from hot
tropical seas--that great wind that Joseph Conrad
in his "Mirror of the Sea" has personified in one
of the sublimest passages in recent literature. It
is an excessively violent wind, as all mariners
know who have encountered it on the South Atlantic
off the River Plate ....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book, Serial / periodical
'To go back to your book ["Joseph Conrad: A
Study"]; I know you thought highly of "Nostromo"
but didn't know you placed it quite so far above
the other books. The other day I took up "The
Secret Agent" and read it through for the first
time (Conrad gave me a copy when it was first
published). Now I shall do the same with
"Nostromo" and read it straight through and try
and keep aside the idea it produced when I first
began to read it—that the S. American
atmosphere is false. [I] mean principally the
mental atmosphere—the mind of the natives.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'To go back to your book ["Joseph Conrad: A
Study"]; I know you thought highly of "Nostromo"
but didn't know you placed it quite so far above
the other books. The other day I took up "The
Secret Agent" and read it through for the first
time (Conrad gave me a copy when it was first
published). Now I shall do the same with
"Nostromo" and read it straight through and try
and keep aside the idea it produced when I first
began to read it—that the S. American
atmosphere is false. [I] mean principally the
mental atmosphere—the mind of the natives.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
'I have lately re-read here the complete works of Conrad and Henry James and am engaged on
reading all the books of Stephen Crane that I can lay my hands on—for the to me astounding
fact is that the works of these three writers are here out of print and practically unobtainable,
such being glory! I had to borrow the Conrad and James from Doubleday and Scribner's
respectively and Knopf has only been able to lend me Crane’s "George's Mother". . . after ringing
up more than twenty new and second hand booksellers. Of Conrad I was most re-impressed by
"Under Western Eyes", "Nostromo" and the "Secret Agent"; of James the "Spoils of Poynton", the
"Wings of the Dove", the "Turn of the Screw" and a dozen short stories. I have also been reading
during a fortnight in Tennessee from which I have just returned, the "Agricultural Census" of the
United States, several lives of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Boone, Crockett and minor Southern
Notabilities, the new (as yet unpublished) volume of poems by Allen Tate; the new (as yet
unpublished) novel of Robert Penn Warren—both these admirable; and a number of other works
in ms. Of lately published work I have vivid recollections of and admiration for “Aleck Maury,
Sportsman”, by Caroline Gordon, “Act of Darkness” by John Peale Bishop,” Walls Against the
Wind” by Frances Park, “Little Candle’s Beam” by Isa Glenn and Graham Greene’s “It’s a
Battlefield” and Arnold Gingrich’s “Cast Down the Laurel”.'
[Ford then indicates his intended shipboard reading between New York and Naples on the S.S.
"Roma" including Crane and W. H. Hudson over the next week or so.]
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
