'A Dirge- Burn' 'The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast [transcribes alll of poem from l.10.]'
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
'Despondency---Burn' 'Oppress'd with grief, oppress'd with care...' [transcribes poem]
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
'A Prayer by Burn' 'O thou great Being! What thou art, /...' [transcribes poem]
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
'Burn. May 1812' 'The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning /...' [transcribes poem]
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: B.A.T. Herbert
'"I well remember the acute sorrow with which, by my own fire-side, I first perused Dr. Currie's Narrative, and some of the letters, particularly of those composed in the latter part of the poet's life," W[ordsworth] wrote in the Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816) ... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Print: Book
'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong Print: Book
In Byron's Journal (14 November 1813-19 April 1814): 'Read Burns to-day.'
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
[analysis of a female respondent in Arnold Freeman's 1918 Sheffield Survey] 'Machinist in a shell factory, age twenty-four... Has read Shakespeare, Burns, Keats, Scott, Tennyson, Dickens, Vanity Fair, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, biography and history'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ... liked to get away from political anxieties by devouring what he called "shilling shockers": adventure stories, American westerns, and thrillers, though he would occasionally leaven the mixture by rereading Dickens and what he considered the erotic passages of Byron, Milton and Burns. He did latch on to some best-sellers, such as Jeffrey Farnol's The Amateur Gentleman (1913), which he read "over and over again" ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lloyd George Print: Book
'[Helen Crawfurd] derived lessons in socialism and feminism from Carlyle, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Dickens, Disraeli's Sybil, Mary Barton, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree, Tennyson's The Princess, Longfellow, Whitman, Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, George Sand, the Brontes, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Crawfurd Print: Book
[Communist activists often displayed hostility to literature, including Willie Gallacher. However his 'hostility to literature abated' in later years and in his later memoirs] 'he confessed a liking for Burns, Scott, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, children's comics and Olivier's film of Hamlet... Of course he admired Dickens, and not only the obvious Oliver Twist: the communist MP was prepared to admit that he appreciated the satire of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Gallacher Print: Book
'The celebrated singer Sir Harry Lauder, when he was still a mineworker, acquired a fair knowledge of American history: "George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ranked second only in my estimation to Robert Burns and Walter Scott. One of his ...favourite books was a popular biography of James Garfield, 'From Log Cabin to White House'".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Harry Lauder Print: Book
'Though miners' MP Robert Smillie surreptitiously gorged on Dick Turpin and Three Fingered Jack as a boy, they... "led to better things": by fourteen he had seen RIchard III, read some of the Sonnets, discovered Burns, Scott and Dickens.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Smillie Print: Book
'Lancashire millworker Ben Brierley read penny fairy tales and horror stories as a boy, but they did not contribute to his work as a dialect poet: "I must confess that my soul did not feel much lifted by the only class of reading then within my reach. It was not until I joined the companionship of Burns and Byron that I felt 'the god within me'".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Ben Brierley Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
'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
David Vincent notes how it was in the poetry of Burns and Byron that the nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley (whose jobs included winding bobbins and working as a 'piecer' in a textile factory) first experienced the sense of the transcendent and uplifting that had been missing from school Bible study.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Unknown
The nineteenth-century labourer Benjamin Brierley would recall in his 1886 memoir having read the poetry of Byron and Burns whilst on '"solitary walks on summer evenings"'.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Benjamin Brierley Print: Book
'Samuel Bamford never forgot the sensation of reading a volume of [...] [Robert Burns's] life and writings whilst working as a porter and warehouseman in Manchester'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Bamford Print: Book
[Transcription from a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text = prose introduction followed by verse] 'During the troubles in the reign of Charles 1st, a/ country girl came up to London in search of a place as/ servant maid ... Lady Mary Anne was a flower in the dew/ Sweet was its smell and bonnie was its hue ...' [total = 1p. of prose and 2x 4 line verses)
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
Letter to Mrs Ourry September 8 1791 'The twin sister of my Petrina has been very unwell. I regarded her danger with composure that excited my own wonder. Perhaps like Burns, "With firm, resolv?d, despairing eye/ I view each aimed dart/
Since one has cut my dearest tie/ And quivers in my heart."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Dunbar April 25 1802 '?Now I have to satisfy you as to my favourite poem of Burns. Doubtless the Daisy is the most finished, and excels in simple elegance. ?The De?il himsel? in humour, exquisite, peculiar humour. I confess, if decorous people could be reconciled to blackguardism, John Hornbook is the very emperor of blackguards ?.' [ continues comments on Burns]
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
In journal entry for Sunday 18 November 1821, Claire Clairmont transcribes several lines from
'Tam O'Shanter,' and "Lament for James Earl of Glencairn,' both by Robert Burns.
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
In journal entry for Sunday 18 November 1821, Claire Clairmont transcribes several lines from
'Tam O'Shanter,' and "Lament for James Earl of Glencairn,' both by Robert Burns.
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
'[letter to Mrs --] 'books, for a certain length of time, are a charming substitute for common conversation. I do not know that I ever read one from which my mind received a higher degree of pleasure than "Currie's life of Burns". To me, its charm was enhanced by a thousand pleasing recollections - a thousand associations, that gave a strong additional interest to every word. The strength of Burns's feelings, the character of his mind, had excited an enthusiastic admiration, at a period when my own enthusiastic feelings were in perfect unison with those of the poet; and in him alone did I meet with the expression of a sensibility with which I could perfectly sympathise: in his emotions there was a strength, an energy, that came home to my heart; while the tender sorrows of other poets had to me appeared mawkish and insipid. Even the strong light in which he saw the ridiculous, was, I fear, too agreeable to me. The idea I then formed of his mind has been confirmed by Dr Currie's delineation of it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'[Letter to H.M. Esq.] I have purchased your friend "Currie's Life of Burns"; which, I confess, has operated like a charm on my benumbed imagination. Never have I been more highly gratified than by the perusal of his inestimable work, which is a [italics] chef-d'oeuvre [end italics] of cultivated and discriminating taste. On reading the poems that are added to the collection, I once more tasted of all that delicious enthusiasm with which the first productions of this child of nature and genius had feasted my soul'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Hamilton Print: Book
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Pattie Stansfield Print: Book
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Rawlings Print: Book
'Three papers were devoted to aspects of Burns & his works. Mrs Goadby read a biographical sketch. Mrs Smith read a paper prepared conjointly with Mrs [?]on Burns as songwriter & Fred Edminson one devoted to Burns's personality. [various songs were performed] Mrs Stansfield read To a Mouse & To a Mountain Daisy Mrs Rawlings the Cotter's Saturday Night.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Ann Smith Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, December 1896 - March 1897, taken from his list of books requested and then sent by his friends. Source author notes that Wilde read and re-read everything available to him in prison. 'Gaston de Latour by Walter Pater, MA (Macmillan), Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Wordsworth's Complete Works in one volume with preface by John Morley (Macmillan, 7/6), Matthew Arnold's Poems. One volume complete. (Macmillan, 7/6), Dante and other Essays by Dean Church (Macmillan, 5/-), Percy's Reliques, Hallam's Middle Ages (History of), Dryden's Poems (1 vol. Macmillan. 3/6), Burns's Poems ditto, Morte D'Arthur ditto, Froissart's Chronicles ditto, Buckle's History of Civilisation, Marlowe's Plays, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (edited by A. Pollard 2 vols 10/-) Macmillan, Introduction to Dante by John Addington Symonds, Companion to Dante by A.J. Butler, Miscellaneous Essays by Walter Pater, An English translation of Goethe's Faust'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'The storm around might roar and rustle
We didna mind the storm a whistle'.
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Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott
