Record Number: 4142

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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

Time

n/a

Place:

city: London, East End
specific address: Davenant Foundation School

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:

Ralph Finn

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

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Alfred Edward Housman

Title:

n/a

Genre:

Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

read in situ
read at school

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Source Information:

Record ID:

4142

Source:

Print

Author:

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=4142, accessed: 25 November 2024

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Additional Comments:

See Ralph L. Finn, 'Spring in Aldgate' (London, 1968) pp.73-4, 85-7