[Permitted Sunday reading for the children of the family]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
'After Dennis Marsden won an exhibition to St Catherine's College, Cambridge his parents, solid Labour supporters, "found supreme happiness sitting on the Backs looking over the river and towards King's College. For my father, Lord Maulever (of Billy Bunter and the Magnet) might have walked that lawn; Tom Brown must have been there, and the Fifth Form from St Dominic's. He had read The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green at Oxford, and saw that I had a "gyp" (as Verdant Green had a "scout"). He imagined how my gyp would shakes his head and say (as Verdant Green's scout always said), "College Gents will do anything". All I could say... couldn't convince my parents that that powerful Cambridge image of my father's schoolboy reading wasn't my Cambridge".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Marsden Print: Book
Octavia Hill found "Tom Brown's Schooldays" 'one of the noblest works I have read' ...
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Octavia Hill Print: Book
'I am reading "Tom's Brown's Schooldays", which is awfully nice.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'We have just finished reading aloud "Pere Goriot" - a hateful book... I have been reading lately and have nearly finished Comte's "Catechism". We have also read aloud "Tom Brown's School Days" with much disappointment. It is an unpleasant, unveracious book'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot (pseud) and G.H. Lewes Print: Book
'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?] Print: Book
'This summer [1857] the tour was to Manchester, Coniston, Inverary Castle, and Carstairs (the home of my father's college friend Monteith). On this journey he read aloud Tom Brown's School-Days to my mother, enjoying it thoroughly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Meeting held at 70 Northcourt Avenue 28/4/1933
C. E. Stansfield in the chair
1 Minutes of last read and approved
2 For the Next Meeting's subject "The Jew in Literature" was chosen with Geo Burrow H. R. & E. B. Smith as
committee
[...]
4 The evening's subject of Berkshire in Literature was then opened up by Charles E. Stansfield reading from
Tom Browns School days a description of the Vale of the White Horse[.] He carried us into a quietude of time
& space where a great lover of the Vale tells of the great open downs & the vale to the north of them.
Dorothy Brain told us something of Old Berkshire Ballads surprising us with their number & variety & read an
amusing Ballad about a lad who died of eating custard, & the Lay of the Hunted Pig.
C. E. Stansfield read an introduction to "Summer is a Cumen In"which was then played and sung on the
Gramophone.
H. R. Smith read a description of "Reading a Hundred Years Ago" from "Some Worthies of Reading"
F. E. Pollard introduced Mary Russell Mitford to the Club giving a short account of her life and Work quoting
with approval a description of her as "A prose Crabbe in the Sun"
M. S. W. Pollard read "The Gypsy" from "Our Village"
Geo Burrows gave us a short Reading from Mathew Arnolds "Scholar Gypsy" and a longer one from
"Thyrsis"[.] During this the Stansfield "Mackie" put in a striking piece of synchronization.
E. B. Castle read an interesting account of the Bucklebury Bowl Turner from H. V. Mortons "In Search of
England".
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles E. Stansfield Print: Book
