Record Number: 7359

---

Reading Experience:

Evidence:

?A situation as an errand boy at a bookseller?s was then found for me. A circulating library was attached to the business. My duties were to clean books and knives and brasses, and then carry books and magazines to the houses of the gentry who were subscribers to the library. The occupation was not uncongenial? for I was able to steal a peep at literature which would not otherwise have come within my reach. The book that was then in greatest demand, as I gathered from so often carrying it from one house to another, was Eliot Warburton?s "Crescent and the Cross", and next to it, I think, came Tennyson?s poems.?

Century:

1800-1849

Date:

unknown

Country:

England

Time

daytime

Place:

city: Cheltenham
other location: between workplace and homes of subcribers, on the street while on errands

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:

William Edwin Adams

Age:

Child (0-17)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

Feb 1832

Socio-Economic Group:

Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder

Occupation:

Errand boy, later journalist

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:

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Title:

[poems]

Genre:

Poetry

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

Borrowed (circulating library)
where he worked as an errand boy

---

Source Information:

Record ID:

7359

Source:

Print

Author:

William Edwin Adams

Editor:

n/a

Title:

Memoirs of a Social Atom

Place of Publication:

London

Date of Publication:

1903

Vol:

1

Page:

78-9

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

William Edwin Adams, Memoirs of a Social Atom, (London, 1903), 1, p. 78-9, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=7359, accessed: 22 December 2024

---

Additional Comments:

From the evidence, it is unclear whether Adams read this book. But as he took the book to so many subscribers as the errand boy of the library, it is probable that he stole a peep at its contents.