Record Number: 1937
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'Soldier's son Joseph Barker... first read the Bible "chiefly as a work of history and was very greatly delighted with many of its stories... One effect was to lead me to regard miracles as nothing improbable". Consequently his response to Pilgrim's Progress was exactly the same: "My impression was, that the whole was literal and true"...Ghost stories, highwayman stories, fairy tales, Paradise Lost and Daniel Defoe were all equally credible. "I was naturally a firm believer in all that was gravely spoken or printed", he recalled. "I doubted nothing that was found in books... I had no idea at the time I read Robinson Crusoe, that there were such things as novels, works of fiction, in existence".'
Century:1800-1849
Date:unknown
Country:n/a
Timen/a
Place:n/a
Type of Experience(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Child (0-17)
Gender:Male
Date of Birth:1806
Socio-Economic Group:Labourer (non-agricultural)
Occupation:soldier's son
Religion:n/a
Country of Origin:n/a
Country of Experience:n/a
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
n/a
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:Pilgrim's Progress
Genre:Other religious, Fiction
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication Detailsn/a
Provenanceunknown
Source Information:
Record ID:1937
Source: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:95-6
Additional Comments:
n/a
Citation:
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 95-6, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=1937, accessed: 25 November 2024
Additional Comments:
See Joseph Barker, 'History and Confessions' pp.116-18
