Reading Tales from Blackwood, and "The Court Servant" (Leigh Hunt)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert Battiscombe Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 21 April 1813: 'I see the Examiner threatens some observations upon you next week ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
Byron to Leigh Hunt, 9 February 1814: 'Your poem I read long ago in "the Reflector" & it is not much to say it is the best "Session" we have ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Serial / periodical
Byron to Leigh Hunt, 22 October 1815: 'My dear Hunt -- You have excelled yourself - if not all your Contemporaries in the Canto which I have just finished ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to Leigh Hunt, [?March-April 1816], on receptions of his poem The Story of Rimini: 'my sister and cousin ... were in fixed perusal & delight with it ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Augusta Leigh
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'she was reading Leigh Hunt's "Rimini", and copied a passage of twenty lines on the character of Giovanni - evidently because it was to her as a portrait of another difficult husband: "He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours / He'd hold a sullen countenance for hours, / And then if pleased to cheer himself a space, / Look for immediate rapture in your face..."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella), Baroness Byron Print: Unknown
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 1 January 1840: 'Read Examiner [...] but could not write at all. Made a cap, therefore.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
'I see no paper but an old Examiner - strong meat - an Olla Podrida, high-flavoured but coarse and na[u]seous to a sentimentalist.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
[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: Serial / periodical
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1816. The diary from May 1815-July 1816 is lost, so this list is our only record for Mary's reading in early 1816. Later in the year texts are referred to in diary entries so as far as possible these works are not given separate database references based on this list. An x marks the fact that Percy Shelley read the book too.]
x Moritz' tour in England
Tales of the Minstrels
x Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa
Peregrine Proteus
x Siege of Corinth & Parasina.
4 vols. of Clarendon's History
x Modern Philosophers
opinions of Various writers on the punishment of death by B. Montagu
Erskines speeches
x Caleb Williams
x 3rd Canto of Childe Harold
Schiller's arminian
Lady Craven's Leters
Caliste
Nouvelle nouvelles
Romans de Voltaire
Reveries d'un Solitaire de Rousseau
Adele et Theodore
x Lettres Persannes de Montesquieu
Tableau de Famille
Le vieux de la Montagne
x Conjuration de Rienzi
Walther par La Fontaine
Les voeux temeraires
Herman d'Una
Nouveaux nouvelles de Mad. de Genlis
x Christabel
Caroline de Litchfield
x Bertram
x Le Criminel se[c]ret
Vancenza by Mrs Robinson
Antiquary
x Edinburgh Review num. LII
Chrononhotonthologus
x Fazio
Love and Madness
Memoirs of Princess of Bareith
x Letters of Emile
The latter part of Clarissa Harlowe
Clarendons History of the Civil War
x Life of Holcroft
x Glenarvon
Patronage
The Milesian Chief.
O'Donnel
x Don Quixote
x Vita Alexandri - Quintii Curtii
Conspiration de Rienzi
Introduction to Davy's Chemistry
Les Incas de Marmontel
Bryan Perdue
Sir C. Grandison
x Castle Rackrent
x Gulliver's Travels
x Paradise Lost
x Pamela
x 3 vol of Gibbon
1 book of Locke's Essay
Some of Horace's odes
x Edinburgh Review L.III
Rights of Women
De senectute by Cicero
2 vols of Lord Chesterfield's leters to his son
x Story of Rimini'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Hunt's journal, which is extremely interesting'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Serial / periodical
'[Tuesday] Dec. 12th. [...] Read Indicators by Hunt'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Serial / periodical
'Wednesday Dec. 13th. [...] Read Indicators'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Serial / periodical
'Read Legend of Montrose - Indicators'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Serial / periodical
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 March 1840:
'I cant agree about the Legend, I read the whole of it - & although your remark upon the
versification seems to me not without its verity -- I do think it a beautiful & most touching play
[goes on to discuss specific passages]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'Byron's Magazine or rather Hunt's 'The Liberal' is arrived in town; but they will not sell it - it is so full of Atheism and Radicalism and other noxious isms. I had a glance of it one evening; I read it thro and found two papers apparently by Byron, and full of talent as well as mischief. Hunt is the only serious man in it, since Shell[e]y died: he has a wish to preach about politics and bishops and pleasure and paintings and nature, honest man; Byron wants only to write squibs against Southey and the like. The work will hardly do. If possible you shall see this number.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'At present the honest people of "the letters" are much shocked at the appearance of Byron's and Hunt's Magazine "The Liberal", which hardly one of the Bibliopolists will venture to sell a copy of. The first two articles, seemingly Byron's, are exceedingly potent - very clever and very wicked; the rest is in Hunt's vein, and no better or worse than a common examiner.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book, Serial / periodical, The LiberalManuscript: Letter
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 25 October 1841:
'I never read Leigh Hunt's book [...] because (now comes a foolish reason) I had understood
that he said cruel things & ungrateful of poor Lord Byron [...] Lately, wishing to think Leigh
Hunt above that shame, I have been wishing myself to get the book & make it out "not so
bad". Strange, that you shd read it only now! -- just now!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
'I assure you, Dear Friend, that I did not read even one line of Signor Hunt's book until it was already published - in fact I didn't have the slightest idea of what it would contain - I beg you if ever this book falls into your hands, do not read it. - it would cause you pain'
[translation of a letter from Mary Shelley to Teresa Guiccioli]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Thank you for your beautiful play - so full of poetry & philosophy and all the loveliest things of this (when you write about it) lovely world.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I have read the rifacciamento with great pleasure - generally it is painful to see an old favourite changed - but you have done the most difficult thing in the world with so true a grace that you more than reconcile me to the alterations. The Story of Rimini is certainly more true, more complete more beautiful as it now stands.'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 29 November 1842:
'Mr Leigh Hunt & Mr Horne have been reviewing Tennyson & Browning in the Church of England
quarterly [...] Mr Horne is acute and generous as he always is, -- but Leigh Hunt's article,
altho' honest in criticism, I do not doubt, & wise in many of the remarks, strikes me as a cold
welcome from a poet to a poet -- & to such a poet as Tennyson! -- & I felt a little vexed while
I was reading it.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Serial / periodical
'Your book is delightful - You move one to the heart for Tasso - & I think make out a better case than he deserves for his oppression - except that a sense that they are right, because they are taught to consider themselves authorities to themselves, is the one thing taught by flatterers and courtiers to the great [Mary then comments further on this and on Tasso's life] Your Pulci is admirable - & so is your Ariosto - & in truth your book is a true and valuable gift to your country'.
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I ought to have written long ago to thank you, both for Percy & myself for your welcome Volume. It tries hard to be as great a favourite as the first - and "Wit and Humour" do their best to rival "Imagination and Fancy". You and Chaucer help them very much - but they are at a disadvantage. Surprize is said to be one of the ingredients of Wit - & it is deprived of that when at every turn of a page you are sure to find it Wit & humour also want a voice - & when read in silence can never raise the laugh that they excite in a sociable circle - thus indeed you [sic] new volume ought to be an Xmas gift & brought out with King and Queen & forfeits amid its festivities'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'In looking over my note I find that I have not half said all I think of the admirable manner you treat the subject of your book in the preface. Did you ever read any of Quevedo? the Spanish wit? - whose dry humour is very pointed - His account of the different awakenings of different characters for the day of Judgement is one among many specimens'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Your kind present was most welcome [Mary then writes at length about her bad health] I have read a great deal of your volumes with great pleasure recognizing old friends'
[letter to Leigh Hunt]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Richard Hengist Horne, 3 December 1844:
'I am grateful enough to [Leigh Hunt] [...] having, .. in addition to all former causes of
gratitude, .. the present delight of reading his new critical work upon poetry. The most
delightful and genial of poetical critics he is assuredly. Not that I always agree with him [goes
on to criticise work in detail] [...] the book is, however, a beautiful book, & will be a
companion to me for the rest of my life. My brother George gave it to me, as the most
acceptable gift in the world.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
[Following transcription of two substantial paragraphs, in which Leigh Hunt describes Coleridge] '[this] is all I can take the trouble to quote from Leigh Hunt's memoirs vol 2 page 223, supposing I should want to cook this up again somewhere. L.H. was our spiritual grandfather, a free man [...] These free, vigorous spirits advance the world, & when one lights on them in the strange waste of the past one says Ah you're my sort -- a great compliment.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'If it had not been for Dugald Gilchrist who reads any thing (or nothing) and wears spectacles besides, I should undoubtedly have curled my hair with your Examiner, without discovering that it contained such interesting news.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Baillie Welsh Print: Serial / periodical
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Savile Morton and Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Lady Harriet Cavendish to her sister, Lady Georgiana Morpeth (December 1806):
'We had the Examiner yesterday. Mr. Hunt's jokes are really wretched. I am more convinced than ever that jokes are the Rocks upon which 9 understandings out of 10 split. When he is serious and impudent his writing often seems to me to be very good, but the Turtle, the sauce etc. in his remarks upon Ld. Ellenborough font Pitie. I wish there was a House of Correction somewhere for people who cut bad jokes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Devonshire family Print: Serial / periodical
'In these days [1815-16] she [Lady Byron] was reading Leigh Hunt's Rimini, and copied a passage of twenty lines on the character of Giovanni -- evidently because it was to her as a portrait of another difficult husband [reproduces eight lines of passage, beginning "He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours; / He'd hold a sullen countenance for hours"]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
'In these days [1815-16] she [Lady Byron] was reading Leigh Hunt's Rimini, and copied a passage of twenty lines on the character of Giovanni -- evidently because it was to her as a portrait of another difficult husband [reproduces eight lines of passage, beginning "He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours; / He'd hold a sullen countenance for hours"]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Lady Byron Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 21 January 1831:
'I return you the "Tatler" that you lent me. I think Mr. Hunt makes more of Moore's letters than they deserve. I certainly wish that Moore had not flattered him so much, but we should recollect that Moore and Mr. Hunt were at that day fellow labourers in a party [...] Party is much the strongest passion of an Englishman's mind [..] There is not one of us who does not tolerate partizans whom one would indignantly reject as ordinary acquaintances. So that, on the whole, I look with a very excusing eye on the flummery with which Moore thought fit to feed the vanity of the weekly critic. As to his present opinions of the man, I suppose they are the correct ones, but I know neither him nor his works, except "Rimini."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Serial / periodical
John Wilson Croker to John Murray, 21 January 1831:
'I return you the "Tatler" that you lent me. I think Mr. Hunt makes more of Moore's letters than they deserve. I certainly wish that Moore had not flattered him so much, but we should recollect that Moore and Mr. Hunt were at that day fellow labourers in a party [...] Party is much the strongest passion of an Englishman's mind [..] There is not one of us who does not tolerate partizans whom one would indignantly reject as ordinary acquaintances. So that, on the whole, I look with a very excusing eye on the flummery with which Moore thought fit to feed the vanity of the weekly critic. As to his present opinions of the man, I suppose they are the correct ones, but I know neither him nor his works, except "Rimini."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte (as Currer Bell) to her publishers, Messrs Smith, Elder and Co., 25 December 1847:
'Permit me to thank you for your present, which reached me yesterday. I was not prepared for anything so truly tasteful, and when I had opened the parcel, removed the various envelopes, and at last got a glimpse of the chastely attractive binding, I was most agreeably surprised. What is better, on examination I find the contents fully to answer the expectation excited by the charming exterior; the [italics]Honey[end italics] is quite as choice as the [italics]Jar[end italics] is elegant. The illustrations too are very beautiful, some of them peculiarly so.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to W. S. Williams, 16 April 1849:
'I took up Leigh Hunt's book "The Town" with the impression that it would be interesting only to Londoners, and I was surprised, ere I had read many pages, to find myself enchained by his pleasant, graceful, easy style, varied knowledge, just views, and kindly spirit. There is something peculiarly anti-melancholic in Leigh Hunt's writings, and yet they are never boisterous. They resemble sunshine, being at once bright and tranquil.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Brontë Print: Book
‘A fairly idle day. I did pay parade etc. and read Leigh Hunt.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Book
'In reading, nothing goes to the heart like any true
account of a mother and son's love for one another,
such as we find in that true book I have already
spoken of in a former chapter, Serge Aksakoff's
"History of my Childhood". Of other books I may cite
Leigh Hunt's "Autobiography" in the early chapters.
Reading the incidents he records of his mother's love
and pity for all in trouble, and her self-sacrificing acts I have exclaimed "How like my
mother!"'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
