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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Record Number: 20363


Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'In my own day all mothers strictly forbade their daughters to read Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise", and all daughters, of course, longed to read nothing so much. I knew one young lady who owned to me that she stole a reading of it standing on the top steps of her father's library-ladder; and another, who procured it and carried it into the country with her on her wedding day, as the first fruits of being her own mistress. Yet within these few years I happened to hear a girl of very warm feeling, enthusiastic, romantic, just the person whose head it would have turned of old, declare she had tried to read it, but been so disgusted that she threw it away before she got through half the first volume'.

Century:

1700-1799

Date:

Until: 4 Aug 1851

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

other location: in the country

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


Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

anon

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

n/a

Socio-Economic Group:

Royalty / aristocracy

Occupation:

n/a

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a


Additional Comments:

a young lady known to Lady Louisa Stuart



Text Being Read:

Author:

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Title:

Julie; ou, la Nouvelle Heloise

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

owned


Source Information:

Record ID:

20363

Source:

Print

Author:

Louisa Stuart

Editor:

R. Brimley Johnson

Title:

Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, The

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1926

Vol:

n/a

Page:

14

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Louisa Stuart, R. Brimley Johnson (ed.), Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart, The, (London, 1926), p. 14, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=20363, accessed: 22 November 2024


Additional Comments:

This text does not appear to be in one of the letters printed. The time of the experience was presumably in LS's own youth, i.e around the 1770s.

   
   
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