Record Number: 26980

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I have been trying to think how far I and my like, middle class schoolboys at the end of our pre-war education, were unquestioning patriots ready to respond to heroics. I think it is true that we were. We were reading now, or having read to us by our English master, the newly published sonnets of Rupert Brooke: 'Now, God be thanked who has matched us with His hour / And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleep.' 'Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead.' and 'Honour has come back, as a king, to earth.' 'If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England.' We had been prepared for these heights: conditioned may be the right word. Tennyson and Browning (besides Shakespeare, of course) we read in the English lessons and learnt by heart; and it cannot be by chance that there comes to my mind unbidden 'Ulysses' - 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield' and the well-known 'Epilogue to Asolando': One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Jan 1910 and 1 Jan 1914

Country:

England

Time

daytime: school hours

Place:

city: Berkhamsted
specific address: Berkhamsted School
classroom

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:

Reading Group:

Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh and schoolmates

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1897

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

schoolboy

Religion:

Anglican

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

classmates

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Rupert Brooke

Title:

'The Soldier'

Genre:

Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown
School textbook - probably owned.

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Source Information:

Record ID:

26980

Source:

Print

Author:

Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh

Editor:

n/a

Title:

Schoolboy into War

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1978

Vol:

n/a

Page:

26

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Harold Edward Leslie Mellersh, Schoolboy into War, (London, 1978), p. 26, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=26980, accessed: 25 November 2024

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Additional Comments:

This is an autobiographical report (1978) of a school reading/listening experience (1910-1914).