Record Number: 4578

---

Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'Flora Thompson's village school had no geography books and no formal instruction in geography or history, other than readers offering stock tales about King Alfred and the cakes and King Canute ordering the tide to retreat... her Royal Reader offered thrilling depictions of the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, the Amazon, Hudson's Bay and the South Pacific, as well as scenes from Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. She also remembered borrowing a decrepit copy of Belzoni's Travels and enjoying intensely the excursion through Egyptian archaeology. But she was an unusually self-motivated reader: her less-educated neighbours were only hazily aware of the existence of Oxford, just nineteen miles away.'

Century:

1850-1899, 1900-1945

Date:

Between Jan 1880 and Dec 1890

Country:

England

Time

daytime

Place:

county: Oxfordshire

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

---

Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Flora Thompson

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

5 Dec 1876

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (agricultural)

Occupation:

later novelist and poet

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

---

Text Being Read:

Author:

Giovanni Battista Belzoni

Title:

Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, &c.

Genre:

History, Geography / Travel

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

borrowed (other)

---

Source Information:

Record ID:

4578

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:

347

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 347, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=4578, accessed: 25 November 2024

---

Additional Comments:

See Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (1939), pp.33-4, 110