Record Number: 20100

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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

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary reactive unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Listener:

Rosemary Sutcliff

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

14 Dec 1920

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Military (navy)

Occupation:

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

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Title:

Last Days of Pompeii

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

20100

Source:

Print

Author:

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=20100, accessed: 25 November 2024

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Additional Comments:

Dates of reading are approximate (autobiography is not very specific). Her mother was reading to her.