Record Number: 24620

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his. '"Gilbert Gurney" is something of an autobiography, as you say [...] the book might have been called a picture, for which our society furnished the principal sitters; yet I could not read it. I diligently tried to do so, but never accomplished a volume, and I have often debated in my own mind how I, who looked with admiration and wonder at Hook's power of oral amusement, should be so repelled by his novels [...] it led me at first to read no novel, that I might have a better excuse to my poor dear Hook for not reading his; and insensibly I lost the taste for them altogether, partly from mu mind's growing less impressionable, but partly, or perhaps chiefly, from a very matter-of-fact cause, that I happened never to have subscribed to a circulating library, and since I left office I have had, I know not how, less spare time than I had at the Admiralty in the height of the war. I was greatly struck with some early detached tales of Mr. Dickens, and some stray livraisons of his longer works, but I found I could not read them continuously'.'

Century:

1800-1849, 1850-1899

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1836 and 3 Jan 1854

Country:

n/a

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 in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

John Wilson Croker

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1780

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Politician

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

Ireland

Country of Experience:

n/a

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Charles Dickens

Title:

novels

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Unknown

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

24620

Source:

Print

Author:

n/a

Editor:

Louis J. Jennings

Title:

The Croker Papers. The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 t0 1830

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1884

Vol:

3

Page:

306

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Louis J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers. The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 t0 1830, (London, 1884), 3, p. 306, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=24620, accessed: 21 December 2024

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Additional Comments:

None