Record Number: 20096
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'My mother started to read to me when I was very young indeed. She read aloud beautifully and never got tired, and she would never, from the first, read anything that she could not enjoy herself, which cut out all the poor quality writing which every right-minded child loves when he can get it. Her only concession was one weekly comic, "Rainbow". But apart from that, I was reared on a fine mixed diet of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Dickens, Stevenson, Hans Andersen, Kenneth Grahame and Kipling – especially Puck of Pook’s Hill whose three magnificent stories of Roman Britain were the beginning of my own passion for the subject, and resulted in the fullness of time in The Eagle of the Ninth. Hero myths of Greece and Rome I had, in an unexpurgated edition which my mother edited herself as she went along, and Norse and Saxon and Celtic legends. There were Whyte Melville’s The Gladiators and Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii and Weigal’s Egyptian Princess; for my mother loved historical novels – history of any kind, though her view of it was always the minstrel’s rather than the historian’s.'
Century:1900-1945
Date:Between 14 Dec 1920 and 1 Jan 1930
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:n/a
Type of Experience(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary reactive unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Listener: Age:Child (0-17)
Gender:Female
Date of Birth:14 Dec 1920
Socio-Economic Group:Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Military (navy)
Artist/Writer (eventually)
Religion:unknown
Country of Origin:England
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
n/a
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:Puck of Pook's Hill
Genre:Fiction, Children's Lit
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication Detailsn/a
Provenanceunknown
Source Information:
Record ID:20096
Source:Rosemary Sutcliff
Editor:n/a
Title:Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
Place of Publication:London
Date of Publication:1993 [1983]
Vol:n/a
Page:53-54
Additional Comments:
n/a
Citation:
Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection, (London, 1993 [1983]), p. 53-54, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=20096, accessed: 17 August 2024
Additional Comments:
Dates of reading are approximate because the autobiography gives few exact dates. On this occasion, her mother was reading to her.