Went into the library to try to rationalize my mind about the deathwatch, - by reading the Cyclopaedia. Feel very unwell today, & nervous. Read the mysteries of Udolpho ? by way of quieting my imagination? & heard the boys read Homer & Zenophon - & read some of Victor Hugo?s & Lamartine?s poetry ? his last song of Childe Harold. Miss Steers kindly sent a packet of French poetry to Mr. Boyd?s for me yesterday. Le dernier chant wants the Byronic character (- an inevitable want for a French composition ? ) and is not quite equal even to Lamartine.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'When asked how books had shaped him, Labour M.P. F.W. Jowett ranged widely: Ivanhoe made him want to read, Unto this Last made him a socialist, Past and Present made him think, Vanity Fair and Les Miserables taught him human sympathy, and Wuthering Heights taught him respect for man and nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: F.W. Jowett Print: Book
'By age fourteen Durham collier Jack Lawson would find... emancipation at the Boldon Miners' Institute... "And didn't I follow the literary trail, once I found it. Like a Fenimore Cooper Indian I was tireless and silent once I started. Scott; Charles Reade, George Eliot; the Brontes; later on Hardy; Hugo; Dumas and scores of others. Then came Shakespeare; the Bible; Milton and the line of poets generally. I was hardly sixteen when I picked up James Thomson's Seasons, in Stead's 'Penny Poets'... I wept for the shepherd who died in the snow".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Jack Lawson Print: Book
'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Sutton Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'In 1917 ... [John Buchan] was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Recuperating after the operation, he read through a dozen of the Waverley Novels, the Valois and D'Artagnan cycles of Dumas, then Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame" and the immense "Les Miserables" ... ending up with half a dozen of Balzac ...'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery & background wh. would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able, I fairly confess, to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why it is absent from Fielding & Richardson. Yet surely Hugo's own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel.
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen 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
'[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
'[Patrick McGill] read virtually nothing, not even the daily papers until, working on the rail line, he happened to pick up some poetry written on a page from an exercise book. somehow it spoke to him and he began to read "ravenously". He brought "Sartor Resartus", "Sesame and Lilies" and Montaigne's essays to work. "Les Miserables" reduced him to tears, though he found "Das Kapital" less affecting. Each payday he set aside a few shillings to buy secondhand books, which after a month's use were almost illegible with rust, grease and dirt....[eventually he] went on to become a popular novelist.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick McGill Print: Book
'Finished my readings in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's "L'Homme qui rit". Also the Frau von Hillern's novel "Ein Arzt der Seele".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot Print: Book
'Read Ruy Blas aloud. Afterwards saw three acts'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud] Print: Book
'I wasted a great deal of time in wrong reading from eleven to fourteen, always hoping for the enjoyment which rarely came, but going on with surprising persistence. A sense of overpowering gloom is connected in my mind with Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", which I read in English, and an impression of a livid brightness with "The Scarlet Letter"; but that is all. Of Carlyle's "French Revolution" all that remains is a sentence like a radiant hillside caught through a rift in a black cloud: the passage where he describes the high-shouldered ladies dancing with the gentlemen of the French Court on a bright summer evening, while outside the yellow cornfields stretched from end to end of France'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'but I was reading "Les Miserables", and consoled myself with the thought that I was too capable of loving noble things.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Book
'Mr Wilson introduced us to another author - Victor Hugo... in 1925, "Les Miserables" gripped us even more than "Pickwick". Mr Wilson must have abridged it ruthlessly, but he made everything in nineteenth-century France sound as if it were happening in the England of our own day...The reading of "Les Miserables" bound us together in one common experience.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Wilson Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836:
'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of
my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my
youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English
drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and
regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as
I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read
Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the
bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great.
And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by
going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of
mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Mary Russell Mitford to Elzabeth Barrett, 13 October 1836:
'I have just read your delightful ballad. My earliest book was "Percy's Reliques," the delight of
my childhood; and after them came Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Borders," the favourite of my
youth; so that I am prepared to love ballads [...] Are you a great reader of the old English
drama? I am -- preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course admitting, and
regretting, the grossness of the age; but that, from habit, one skips, without a thought just as
I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew I could not comprehend. have you read
Victor Hugo's Plays? (he also is one of my naughty pets), and his "Notre Dame?" I admit the
bad taste of these, the excess; but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great.
And then he has [...] made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by
going back to the old fountains, Froissart, &c. Again, these old Chronicles are great books of
mine.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 27 November 1842:
''Have you observed what I have observed [...] that Charles Dickens has meditated deeply &
not without advantage upon Victor Hugo, -- and that some of his very finest things .. (all for
instance of the Jew's condemnation-hours in Oliver Twist) .. are taken from Victor Hugo, ..
"Les derniers jours d'un condamne" & passim? I admire Boz very absolutely & gratefully [...]
but my sense of his power & genius grew grey & weak [...] with reading Hugo.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
'It was only a month before or perhaps it was only a week before, that I had read to him aloud from beginning to end, and to his perfect satisfaction, as he lay on the bed not being very well at the time, the proofs of his translation of Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea". Such was[...] my first introduction to the sea in literature. [...] I am not likely to forget the process of being trained in the art of reading aloud.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Manuscript: Codex, Sheet, Conrad's father's translation into Polish.
Mary Russell Mitford to Elizabeth Barrett, 18 March 1845:
'I have the first volume of Victor Hugo's "Odes et Ballades," but they are slavishly loyal to those vile old Bourbons. What could he see in them? I suppose I shall like the second volume better.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Russell Mitford Print: Book
#Last night I set to work and Bob wrote to my dictation three or four pages of "V. Hugo's Romances" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872:
'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'Letters & Letter writing were then proceeded with.
Mrs Burrow read three letters of William Cowper characteristically interesting & amusing.
Mrs C. Elliott read in French two amusing letters one by Madame de Sevigny & one by Victor Hugo.
C. I. Evans read two [?] Ladies Battle & K.S. Evans two by R.L. Stevenson
F.E. Pollard read letters by G.B. Shaw & J.M. Barrie to Mrs Patrick Campbell on the death of her son killed in action.
Geo Burrow read several characteristic epistles of Charles Lamb & Howard R. Smith part of a letter by Lord Chesterfield to his son.
The Club were also much interested by seeing a number of Autograph letters from famous folk shown by various members of the Club.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: C. Elliott Print: Unknown
'At present I am deep in Les Misérables, which is wonderful.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Constance Wilde Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas C. Elliott Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: E. Dorothy Brain Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Reginald H. Robson Print: Book
'A Meeting held at Oakdene 20/2/1929 S. A. Reynolds in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting read and approved
[...]
4. The Subject of the evening Victor Hugo was then taken[.] Howard R Smith gave a brief
sketch
of his life[.] Thos C. Elliott gave some estimate of Hugos verse & his position in French
literature
following this up by reading in French "Boaz" & Waterloo. after supper Mis Brain read from Les
Miserables which was followed by some general discussion on Hugos work. R. H. Robson read
from Toilers of the sea & H. B. Lawson read from Ninety three'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: H. B. Lawson Print: Book
'"I think it was Victor Hugo's book Les Miserables that decided me to do what I could to alleviate the distress and suffering of the poor. That story gives you such a vivid picture of the under side of life, all the wretched & sordid details of the troubles of the poor -- troubles that could be lessened."'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George Print: Book
'In one letter, written in June 1893, he logs Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Lorna Doone ("seventh or eighth time"), Saintsbury's Essays on French Novelists, Dumas's Tulipe Noire, Maupassant, and some poems of Hugo and Gautier. A month later he is reporting on Andrew Lang's Lectures on Literature ("very good"), P. G. Hamerton's Intellectual Life ("excellent"), the poems of Robert Bridges ("very good") Henry James's Madonna of the Future ("peculiar"), R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae ("fourth or fifth time"), Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and Ibsen's Doll House, League of Youth and Pillars of Society. "I am beginning to like Ibsen more than I did. I understand him better."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'Fog in the early morning, sun came out after lunch. Quite chilly. Read Arabic and "Les Misérables".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'Finished the "Misérables" and began "Simon Dale". [...].The little Morel boy and I made paper boats and sailed them in the bath this afternoon. We passed the Northern point of Sumatra about 1. All the ports were closed for it was rough and I came up and slept on deck for a bit.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
‘I am glad you sent that cutting from Wells’ Book. I hope you understood it.
I did not. Not a word of it can I make sense of. I would rather we did not
read this Book. Now "The Passionate Friends" I found astounding in its
realism but like all the great terrible books it is impossible to “take sides”. It
is not meant to be a comfortable book; it is discussional; it refuses to
ignore the unpleasant … At present I am deep in a marvellous work of
Hugo’s The Laughing Man.’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'Mr Joseph Conrad, the author, writes: I don’t remember any child’s book. I
don’t think I ever read any; the first book I remember distinctly is Hugo’s
"Travailleurs de la Mer" which I read at the age of seven. But within the last
two years I’ve participated in my son’s (age 5) course of reading, and I share
his tastes – in prose, Grimm and Andersen; in verse, Lear.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad Print: Book
