Record Number: 33907

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

‘...in my Sophocles I fail’d, chiefly from being put on in a misprinted passage – for the play was one I had studied with more than common attention. In Virgil I stumbled from mere confusion; the passage I had read, and that too carefully – fifty times at least. In Pindar I was not very far amiss; in the O-dyssee alone I have real cause for shame, for to tell the truth, I took it up for a make-weight, in the expectation of not being put on it at all. My Illiad, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Horace, were given me on paper.’

Century:

1800-1849

Date:

Between 1 Jan and 6 Dec 1818

Country:

England

Time

daytime

Place:

city: Oxford
county: Oxfordshire
specific address: Several Schools in Oxford University

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:

Hartley Coleridge

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

19 Dec 1796

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Oxford undergraduate student

Religion:

Church of England

Country of Origin:

England

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:

Homer

Title:

Odyssey

Genre:

Classics

Form of Text:

Print: written and oral examinations

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

n/a

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Source Information:

Record ID:

33907

Source:

Print

Author:

Hartley Coleridge

Editor:

Grace Evelyn and Earl Leslie Griggs

Title:

Letters of Hartley Coleridge

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1936

Vol:

n/a

Page:

19

Additional Comments:

Letter on his final university examinations addressed to Hartley's uncle, the Rev. George Coleridge (Ottery St. Mary, Devon), 6 December 1818, Merton College.

Citation:

Hartley Coleridge, Grace Evelyn and Earl Leslie Griggs (ed.), Letters of Hartley Coleridge, (London, 1936), n/a, p. 19, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=33907, accessed: 13 March 2025

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Additional Comments:

Hartley records the following on his 'listener' - one of his examiners: 'Here I must take an opportunity of expressing the high sense I entertain of Mr. Ellison's kindness, whose mild and gentlemanly system of examination, enabled me to acquit myself in many particulars, better than I should otherwise have done'.