'Philip Inman conveyed a ... specific sense of the uses of literacy for an early Labour MP. The son of a widowed charwoman, he bought up all the cheap reprints he could afford and kept notes on fifty-eight of them... There were Emerson's essays, Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Lamb's Essays of Elia, classic biogaphies (Boswell on Johnson, Lockhart on Scott, Carlyle on Sterling), several Waverley novels, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Shakespeare's sonnets, Tennyson, Browning, William Morris and Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Inman Print: Book
'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Print: Book
To Miss Hunt, April 7, 1794
'At present I am puzzling at Persian and Arabic, and I mean to begin Hebrew. I get on at least with Spanish, for I have been able to meet with only one book since I read Don Quixotte, which was the "History of the Incas" by Garcillaso de la Vega. I was very pleased with it, though it is very long and in some parts tedious.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Smith Print: Book
Elizabeth Missing Sewell on her reading at home in the Isle of Wight, after leaving her Bath boarding school in 1830:
'I used to study by myself, for I knew that I was woefully ignorant. Such books as Russell's "History of Modern Europe" and Robertson's "Charles the Fifth", I read, and also Watts on the "Improvement of the Mind", and I plodded through an Italian history of the Venetian Doges, lent me by an intimate and valued friend of my father, Mr. Turnbull [...] I taught myself besides to read Spanish -- for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of
the books which I knew so well by name. The elements of botany on the Linnean system was another of my attempted acquirements, but I am afraid my studies were very superficial: I knew nothing perfectly, but I read everything that came in my way. There was an excellent town library in Newport, from which I could get any good modern works; and, beside the graver literature, I had always some lighter book on hand, and especially delighted in Walter Scott's novels and poetry. Byron, too was a great favourite.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Sewell Print: Book
'Jefferson reads Don Quixote - C. reads Gibbon - S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso - Read Voltaire's Essay on Nations'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Jefferson Hogg Print: Book
'Shelley reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Don Quixote - afterwards read mem. of the Prin/sse of Ba/th aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Drawing lesson - read Alphonsine - Shelley reads Don Q.[uixote] aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read the Introduction to Sir H. Davy's Chemistry - write. In the evening read Anson's voyage and Curt. Shelley reads Don Q. aloud after tea - Finish Anson's voyage before night.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Davy's Chemistry with Shelley - read Curt. and Ides travels. Shelley reads Montaigne and Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Ides travels. S. reads Don Quixote aloud in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'It is one of the most extraordinary accidents in my life, and gives ground to think of Don Quixot's adventures how people may be surprized'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
'Read Livy - Persiles & Sigismunda'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Don Quixote & Calderon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'I taught myself besides to read Spanish - for having found a Spanish "Don Quixote" lying about, which no-one claimed, I took possession of it, bought a grammar and dictionary, and set to work to master the contents of the book which I knew so well by name'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'Johnson praised "The Spectator," particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, "Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die.— I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come."
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'It was at this time, too, in the 'silent' reading periods at school, that - conventionally enough, I suppose, for a bookish child - I came upon Stevenson's "Treasure Island", "Don Quixote", "David Copperfield", all in abridged versions'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Rawlings Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald Robson Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson Print: Book
'The evening was then devoted to the consideration of Cervantes - his life & work. C.E. Stansfield read a paper & readings were given by Mrs Rawlings, Alfred Rawlings, Mrs Evans, Mr Robson & Mrs Robson'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield Print: Book
'Since the age of five I have been a great reader [...]. At ten years of age I had read much of Victor Hugo and other romantics. I had read in Polish and in French, history, voyages, novels; I knew "Gil Blas" and "Don Quixote" in abridged editions; I had read in early boyhood Polish poets and some French poets, but I cannot say what I read on the evening [in September 1889] before I began to write myself. I believe it was a novel, and it is quite possible that it was one of Anthony Trollope's novels.It is very likely.My acquatance with him was then very recent. He is one of the English novelists whose works I read for the first time in English. With men of European reputation, with Dickens and Walter Scott and Thackeray, it was otherwise. My first introduction to English imaginative literature was "Nicholas Nickleby". It was extraordinary how well Mrs. Nickleby could chatter disconnectedly in Polish [...] It was, I have no doubt an excellent translation. This must have been in the year 1870.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
'David Watson, M.A. of St. Andrews University, used to spend every spare moment of his day
and whole Sundays on end with this writer [Ford] standing beside him at his pulpit and
construing for him every imaginable kind of book from “Ataxerxes” of Madame de Scudéry and
“Les Enfants de [sic] Capitaine Grant” by Jules Verne, to ode after ode of Tibullus, Fouqué’s
“Udine”, all of the “Inferno”, the greater part of “Lazarillo de Tormes” and “Don Quixote” in the
original[…]
In addition, Mr. Watson had this writer translate for him orally into French “The Two Admirals”,
“The Deerslayer”, and “The Last of the Mohicans”—which made this writer appreciate what a
magnificent prose writer Cooper was.’
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Ford Madox Ford Print: Book
