William Shakespeare

She could read by four-and-a-half, and recalls an early admiration for hymns by Anna Letitia Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth . Julius Cæsar, the first Shakespearean play that she saw, left a lasting impression. Later...

On her own the child AW was always reading. At eight she identified in someone else's house a photograph of Booker T. Washington —and asked, Why don't you give it to me, please? After...

She demonstrated an early interest in reading. Scott , Tennyson , and Barrett Browning numbered among her early favourites. Her father, however, did not allow her to read Shakespeare , as he was repelled by...

She chose the medieval option. Her tutor was Rosemary Woolf , and she studied no authors later than Shakespeare . She reports the results of this in two different ways. In one version the course...

At this stage of her life, Rosie's great interest and talent was not writing but painting, like her sister. She set out to make a huge, hanging, illustrated copy of Keats 's Ode to Autumn...

As a sixth-form student, she went on a class trip to Italy, where she was introduced to the art of the Renaissance. Shakespeare was another important discovery. Her class also took trips to the...

HP attended Hackney Downs Grammar School , where he excelled at sports, particularly as a runner. Joe Brearley , his teacher of English, was important in nurturing his love of poetry and drama, and casting...

MA was a fluent reader and writer by the time she was seven years old. She then attended various schools, except for a period of learning at home with a governess after she had...

MEC was educated at home. She read widely during her childhood, including works by Shakespeare and Malory . She studied poetry, history and drawing. Saturday afternoons were spent with friends, acting scenes from Scott 's...

In India, RG later wrote, it was thought there were five things a girl needed to know if she were to take her place in any sort of society: to dance, to play the...

Marguerite Johnson had already become a voracious reader, both of Black writers and of canonical dead white males. Shakespeare , she wrote later, was my first white love. She also enjoyed and respected...

Mr Kung despised fiction and the Sydenstricker library contained only the supposedly factual Plutarch 's Lives and Foxe 's Book of Martyrs, but Pearl read fiction avidly in both Chinese and English, devouring Shakespeare

KR wrote that she grew up reading the Bible daily and memorising passages from it. Her mother could recite long passages from Milton and other English poets, besides Scottish poems and ballads. She was glad...

Eva read the usual children's books, but the great discovery was her first Shakespeare play, As You Like It. She received this as a present on her ninth birthday and built an imaginative life...

MF 's father established a rigorous and structured education for her that began at age three-and-a-half. She was given daily lessons in Latin grammar, mathematics, history, and classics. This course of study later included French...