Record Number: 4955

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'A South Wales miner, raised in an orphanage, acknowledged that "Robin Hood was our patron saint, or ideal. We sincerely believed in robbing the rich to help the poor". (Actually he stole from an old widow's tuck shop). "Our real heroes were robbers like Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, and Charles Peace, whose 'Penny dreadful' biographies we knew by heart". Yet in later life, even as a Calvinistic Methodist minister, he did not condemn that genre: "It introduced me to a romantic world when pennies were scarce and libraries seemed far beyond my reach. We read the badly printed booklets in all sorts of places, even in church; they gave us glimpses of freedom, abandon, and romance, heroism and defiance of fate... As a corrective to natural law-breaking propensities, the 'penny dreadful' always ended with the punishment of crime".'

Century:

1850-1899

Date:

unknown

Country:

Wales

Time

n/a

Place:

other location: orphanage

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:

anon

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1875

Socio-Economic Group:

Labourer (non-agricultural)

Occupation:

miner, later a Methodist minister

Religion:

Methodist

Country of Origin:

Wales

Country of Experience:

Wales

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

anon

Title:

Robin Hood

Genre:

Fiction, Children's Lit, Biography, Ephemera

Form of Text:

Print: Book, Serial / periodical

Publication Details

'penny dreadful' cheap booklet

Provenance

owned

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Source Information:

Record ID:

4955

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:

368

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 368, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=4955, accessed: 22 December 2024

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Additional Comments:

See J. H. Howard, 'Winding Lanes' (Caernarvon, 1938) pp. 27-30