Record Number: 20347

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Your mention of Hawthorne puts me in mind to tell you what rabid [underlined] admirers we are of his [...] There is no prose write of the present day I have half the interest in I have in him, his style, in my mind is so beautifully refined and there is such exquisite pathos and quaint humour, and such an awfully [underlined] deep knowledge of human nature, not that hard unloving detestable, and, as it is purely one sided (or wrong [underlined] sided) false reading of it that one finds in Thackeray. He reminds me in many things of Charles Lamb, and of heaps of our rare old English humourists, with their deep pathetic nature--and one faculty he possesses beyond any writer I remember (not dramatic, for then I would certainly remember Shakespeare, and others on further though perhaps) viz. that of exciting you to the highest pitch without on any [underlined] occasion that I am aware of making you feel by his catastrophe ashamed of having been excited. What I mean is, if you have ever read it, such a case as occurs in the "Mysteries of Udolpho" where your disgust is beyond all expression on finding that all your fright about the ghostly creature that has haunted you throughout the volumes has been caused by a pitiful wax image! [...] And no Author I know does [underlined] try to work upon them [i.e. the passions] more, apparently with no [underlined] effort to himself. I cannot satisfy myself as to whether I like his sort of Essays contained in the twice told tales best, or his more finished works such as Blithedale romance. Every touch he adds to any character gives a higher interest to it, so that I should like the longer ones best, but there is a concentration of excellence in the shorter things and passages that strike, in force like daggers, in their beauty and truth, so that I generally end in liking that best which I have read last [...] There are beautiful passages in Longfellow, above all, as far as my knowledge goes in the Golden Legend, some of which in a single reading impressed themselves on my memory.'

Century:

1850-1899

Date:

unknown

Country:

Scotland

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Lasswade
specific address: Mavish Bush

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:

Margaret De Quincey

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

1818

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

part-time secretary for her father, Thomas De Quincey

Religion:

unknown

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

Scotland

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

Thomas De Quincey's daughter

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Ann Radcliffe

Title:

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

20347

Source:

Print

Author:

n/a

Editor:

Willard Hallam Bonner

Title:

De Quincey at Work

Place of Publication:

Buffalo, NY

Date of Publication:

1936

Vol:

n/a

Page:

22

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Willard Hallam Bonner (ed.), De Quincey at Work, (Buffalo, NY, 1936), p. 22, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=20347, accessed: 22 November 2024

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Additional Comments:

From a letter from Margaret to De Quincey's American publisher James T. Fields, dated January 8, 1853. Margaret does not reference when she read Radcliffe's novel, though the reading experience certainly occurred prior to writing the letter.