'[Rose Macaulay's] library comprised chiefly old tomes from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which she read and re-read with absorbed delight, from Hakluyt to Addison... Her most cherished books were the twelve volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary inherited from her father. As the daughter of a don and a lover of words, she added her own marginal annotations to those pencilled in by George Macaulay'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rose Macaulay Print: Book
Friday 15 August 1924: 'When I was 20 I liked 18th Century prose; I liked Hakluyt, Merimee. I read masses of Carlyle, Scott's life & letters, Gibbon, all sorts of two volume biographies, & Shelley.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book
Sunday 8 December 1929: 'It was the Elizabethan prose writers I loved first & most wildly, stirred by Hakluyt, which father lugged home [from library] for me [...] He must have been 65; I 15 or 16, then; & why I dont know, but I became enraptured, though not exactly interested, but the sight of the large yellow page entranced me. I used to read it & dream of those obscure adventurers, & no doubt practised their style in my copy books. I was then writing a long picturesque essay upon the Christian religion, I think; called Religio Laici, I believe [...] & I also wrote a history of Women; & a history of my own family -- all very longwinded & El[izabe]than in style.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Stephen Print: Book