Record Number: 1378

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Emrys Daniel Hughes, [an] imprisoned CO and son of a Tonypandy miner, learned that the authorities were not unaware of the subversive potential of great literature. Following a Home Office directive to examine prisoners' books, the chaplain confiscated a volume of Shelley, though not before Hughes had a chance to read and discuss it. The padre also apparently removed Tristram Shandy from the prison library: Hughes found it whilst cleaning the chaplain's rookm and had read it on the sly... In More's Utopia he discovered a radical rethinking of criume and punishment. The World Set Free, in which HG Wells predicted the devastation of nuclear war, naturally spoke to his antiwar activism, and he was greatly impressed by the Quaker idealism in George Fox's journal, a biography of William Penn and Walt Whitman's poems.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1914 and 1918

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

other location: prison

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Emrys Daniel Hughes

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1894

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

son of miner

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

Wales

Country of Experience:

n/a

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Herbert George Wells

Title:

The World Set Free

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

borrowed (other)
Prison library

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Source Information:

Record ID:

1378

Source:

Print

Author:

Jonathan Rose

Editor:

n/a

Title:

The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes

Place of Publication:

New Haven

Date of Publication:

2001

Vol:

n/a

Page:

51-2

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 51-2, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=1378, accessed: 21 December 2024

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Additional Comments:

See Emrys Daniel Hughes, "Welsh Rebel" in The National Library of Scotland