Record Number: 19750

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I have just finished [italics] The Mill on the Floss[end italics]. Reading it and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] have given me the most extraordinary pleasure. I begin to think George Eliot is not only the greatest English woman novelist but perhaps the greatest English novelist. She has not the fiery poetry of Emily Bronte nor the exquisite surface of Jane Austen but she has a richness and sweep and depth that is Shakespearean. The one thing that maims or constrains her a little is some rigid moral sense which goes against her [italics] natural [end italics ] morality. She is haunted by an impossible ideal of purity and strictness. In [italics] Middlemarch [end italics] and [italics] Adam Bede [end italics] she incarnates this in two women; one so impossibly good that she is repellent. I am in for a George Eliot bout as a drunkard goes on a jag. Over dinner I raced through a short life of her.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

15 Jun 1938

Country:

England

Time

evening: over dinner

Place:

n/a

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:

Antonia White

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

31 Mar 1899

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

writer

Religion:

[lapsed] Catholic

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

christene Eirene Botting

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Text Being Read:

Author:

[unknown]

Title:

[a life of George Eliot]

Genre:

Biography

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

19750

Source:

Print

Author:

Antonia White

Editor:

Susan Chitty

Title:

Antonia White. Diaries 1926-1957

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1991

Vol:

I

Page:

134

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Antonia White, Susan Chitty (ed.), Antonia White. Diaries 1926-1957, (London, 1991), I, p. 134, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=19750, accessed: 22 December 2024

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Additional Comments:

None