Record Number: 985

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'

Century:

1800-1849

Date:

unknown

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

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:

Thomas Frost

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1821

Socio-Economic Group:

Clerk / tradesman / artisan / smallholder

Occupation:

printer

Religion:

n/a

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

n/a

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

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Joseph Addison

Title:

The Spectator

Genre:

Essays / Criticism, History

Form of Text:

Print: Book, Serial / periodical, periodical bound into books

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

borrowed (other)
Grandmother's book

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Source Information:

Record ID:

985

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:

37

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, (New Haven, 2001), p. 37, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=985, accessed: 22 December 2024

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Additional Comments:

See Thomas Frost, 'Reminiscences of a Country Journalist' (London, 1886) pp.225-6