Record Number: 28375

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755: 'You have a very just opinion of St. John's works [...] As far as I have seen, and I read at Ember the last volume, which contains his essays, there is nothing in his objections but what has been published and answered over and over [...] I know not whether his system may be more properly called deistical, or atheistical; since, though in words he allows a God, he seems to make him such a one as Epicurus did; and to think that we are beneath his notice, or have very little to do with him. He laughs at all notions of revelation, or a particular providence, and reckons the present life the whole of man's existence. These essays, by the way, afford us abundant and irrefragable proof, that the plan of the Essay on Man was St. John's, and not Pope's [...] You have here the whole scheme, the thoughts and in many places the very words of the poem; and a more consistent scheme it is here, than it appears there, after the poet and the parson had laid their heads together to disguise and make it pass for a christian system [comments further].'

Century:

1700-1799

Date:

unknown

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 in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Thomas Edwards

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

n/a

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Writer

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

n/a

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:

Alexander Pope

Title:

Essay on Man

Genre:

Essays / Criticism, Poetry, Philosophy

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

28375

Source:

Print

Author:

n/a

Editor:

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Title:

Correspondence of Samuel Richardson [...] Selected from the original manuscripts, bequeathed by him to his family

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1804

Vol:

3

Page:

109-110

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (ed.), Correspondence of Samuel Richardson [...] Selected from the original manuscripts, bequeathed by him to his family , (London, 1804), 3, p. 109-110, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=28375, accessed: 22 November 2024

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Additional Comments:

None