Record Number: 4137
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'While his widowed mother... worked a market stall, Ralph Finn scrambled up the scholarship ladder to Oxford University. He credited his success largely to his English master at Davenant Foundation School: "When I was an East End boy searching for beauty, hardly knowing what I was searching for, fighting against all sorts of bad beginnings and unrewarding examples, he more than anyone taught me to love our tremndous heritage of English language and literature". And Finnn never doubted that it was HIS heritage: "My friends and companions Tennyson, Browning, Keats, Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, Donne, Housman, the Rosettis. All as alive to me as thought they had been members of my family". After all, as he was surprised and pleased to discover, F.T. Palgrave (whose Golden Treasury he knew thoroughly) was part-Jewish'.
Century:1900-1945
Date:unknown
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:city: London, East End
specific address: Davenant Foundation School
(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Child (0-17)
Gender:Male
Date of Birth:24 May 1912
Socio-Economic Group:Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder
Occupation:market stall holder's son
Religion:n/a
Country of Origin:England
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
reading promoted by schoolmaster so presumably in class at school
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:n/a
Genre:Poetry
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication Detailsn/a
Provenanceread in situ
read at school
Source Information:
Record ID:4137
Source:Jonathan Rose
Editor:n/a
Title:The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Place of Publication:New Haven
Date of Publication:2001
Vol:n/a
Page:228
Additional Comments:
n/a
Citation:
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 228, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=4137, accessed: 17 August 2024
Additional Comments:
See Ralph L. Finn, 'Spring in Aldgate' (London, 1968) pp.73-4, 85-7