Pam Gibson’s reading journey

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Val Hewson

Pam was born in 1952 and has lived in Sheffield for 51 years. She was a teacher.

Reading has always been extremely important to me, although I cannot remember how I got started or recall having stories read to me. I have vague recollections of Joyce Brisley Lankester’s Milly Molly Mandy and Noddy and Big Ears from Enid Blyton, but my clearest memories of reading and being read to come from school at the age of nine, when I had obviously become a very keen independent reader. Reading times were part of the school day (I remember reading Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did and finding it hard when I had to stop!) and we were read stories which I found gripping e.g. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis, and Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi from The Jungle Book.

Reading was encouraged at home; my mother was a great reader although she can’t have had much time when we were all little. I don’t remember possessing many books. I did have a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses which I loved, and Sunday School prizes were books of Bible stories. I had my own bookcase in my bedroom so it must have housed some books!

From the age of seven I joined the local library – Wennington Road, Southport – and from nine was allowed to go on my own. I would be there most days during the holidays, having read my allocation of three books very quickly. I loved all Enid Blyton’s books (except The Secret Seven), the American Bobbsey Twins from Laura Lee Hope, and Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School. I’d read into the night with a torch under the covers. We all had a weekly comic, mine was the Judy, eventually moving on to Jackie. Disaster struck on one occasion when we were all suffering from chicken pox: somehow the librarian got wind of this and we were banned from the library for three weeks! I remember being devastated and extremely bored – we didn’t have a television and we were confined to bed; mother having been a nurse, she treated us like patients in a hospital! 

I’m not sure how much my reading was directed, apart from negatively. Certain books were considered ‘not suitable’ e.g. James Bond, and we were not allowed to use the adult section of the library (I can’t remember when that restriction was lifted). Needless to say, adult literature, especially if it contained sex scenes, became very attractive, and I remember taking paperbacks off the shelf in Woolworths and reading the juicy bits! I also read a lot of stories about young women in different careers – all very romantic of course! My ambition was to be an air hostess for a long while. Encyclopedia Britannica introduced me to non-fiction, and we also had the monthly Reader’s Digest at home. Mum’s medical books were a fascinating read and I remember spending ages poring over diagrams of the human body. I was also influenced by Bible classes and read a lot of Christian literature by authors like C S Lewis, David Shepherd and Richard Wurmbrand.

In my middle to late teens I read Mills and Boon stories obsessively! Mary Stewart, L M Montgomery and the Anne books, Georgette Heyer were great favourites. You can see that my taste in reading material was pretty lightweight and romantic! I don’t remember reading anything particularly weighty or classical except through school, for O Level and A Level English Literature, which I very much enjoyed. There was reading for pleasure (escapism) and serious reading (study).

At university I eventually decided to give up reading Mills and Boon books as I was virtually addicted to them and living in a world of unreality!  More variety was needed! However I’m struggling to remember what took their place! Maybe that’s when I discovered Mary Stewart – slightly better literature! I remember reading Lord of the Rings around this time, all three volumes in less than a week (once I’d got through the first 50 pages). There was a period when I read a lot of adventure and fantasy fiction/adventure books by eg Alistair MacLean,  Raymond Feist, gritty, daring, exciting reading. But I was frustrated that female characters were few and far between, and fairly insignificant. Were exciting women writers in short supply in the ‘70s and ‘80s? I was introduced to Winston Graham and Poldark in 1986 when I was on maternity leave, and was hooked. 

Since moving to Sheffield in the early ‘70s I’ve always used the local library. I first joined Walkley Library in 1973, moving to Broomhill a few years later, and now I mostly use Woodseats Library. When teaching I used the Schools Library Service regularly – what a fantastic resource that was! I have also made use of the Library’s Book Group loan service in the past.

*Woodseats Library (courtesy of Sheffield City Council/Picture Sheffield. Ref: a06117)*

It was fortunate that my husband Alan also loved reading, so it was a companiable pastime for us both. In fact in those days, before digital readers, holiday reading books formed a very large (and heavy) part of our luggage. The thought of running out of reading material while we were away was horrifying! 

I’m happy to say that I managed to pass on a love of reading to both my children, who continue to spend time reading as adults. My daughter and I visited Prince Edward Island a few years ago, visited Green Gables and went to see Anne the Musical. Of course I re-read all the Anne books and appreciated L M Montgomery’s creation all over again, especially Rilla of Ingleside, a very powerful portrayal of the effect of WW1 on women, something I hadn’t appreciated on my first reading. 

*Bedroom at Green Gables (© Pam Gibson)*

I’m wary of watching screen versions of contemporary novels I’ve really enjoyed, especially if my imagination has been very fired; for me they rarely match up to the intensity or quality of the written word. I prefer to stick with the version created in my own head. There are of course exceptions: Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean and Brokeback Mountain from Annie Proulx, all of which worked really well for me. And interestingly I enjoy screen versions of the classics – Sunday afternoon serials formed part of my adolescence. However with e.g. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) or Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens), I couldn’t take the risk! I am more likely to be inspired to read the book after having seen the screen version. I expect there to be so much more depth to the text.

About 25 years ago I decided to keep a record of the books I read in order to pursue further works by authors I had enjoyed.  I also joined a reading group in 1999 which was instrumental in widening my reading material. It is also very interesting, challenging and informative. Talking with other people who have read the same book but who may have a very different understanding of it is fascinating and has added another dimension to my reading journey. 

*Here and below pages from Pam’s reading journal*

These days I continue to read widely and mostly for pleasure. I love losing myself in a good book, and always have a book on the go. Reading in bed is a huge pleasure! I enjoy crime fiction and have my favourite writers and investigators. I still read romantic fiction for a bit of escapism and every now and again re-read a Georgette Heyer. In addition to the monthly book group choice I will read an average of five or six books a month. I’ve also begun to re-read some of the classics, such as the Hugh Walpole Herries series, The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, and Jane Austen’s Emma. I find I read these much more carefully now, in order to appreciate the text.

Shirley L’s reading journey

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Val Hewson

Shirley L, born in North Wales in 1944, is an artist. She and her husband lived abroad and around the UK because of his work, before retiring to Sheffield in 2004. She is a keen member of a book group.

I have always read to my children, and grandchildren, and I enjoyed every minute of it, but I do not remember myself being read to as a child.

My home did not have bookshelves full of books. Looking back, I don’t think I gave it a thought, or felt that I was missing out. It may sound strange but it never registered with me until I started to think about it now, for this reading journey. I do remember having one book for Christmas when I was quite young, and it was all about film stars. This was most probably due to the fact I loved going to the cinema with my friends.

I was always encouraged to do well at school, so of course there was a lot of reading then. Later on, when I was about 11 or 12, I read What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge’s book about the adventures of a young American, Katy Carr, and her brothers and sisters. A lovely red hardback if I remember correctly. I really enjoyed it. I read Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven books too, I think when I was about nine or ten. Being an only child, friends were important in my life, so I loved reading about the children’s friendships and adventures.

*Illustration, p. 8, What Katy Did, 1873, Addie Ledyard (public domain)*

All this is a very long time ago, so please forgive me if I appear vague! I have little recollection where all these books came from, but I do know that I mainly read my books at home and that I did visit the library – Rhyl Library, on Wellington Road I think. It was actually within the Town Hall. The adult section was at the front and the children’s at the back. The building is still there but the library has been moved.

The old Rhyl Library, built in 1907 with a donation from the Scottish-American philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie
(by permission of Rhyl History Club)

My friend Jill, who I’ve been talking to about our childhood reading, thinks that I most probably got the Enid Blytons from the library. This makes sense to me. Jill also says that when we started grammar school, aged 11, of course, for our first year we were told to read novels during the school holidays – three in the summer and obviously less during the smaller holidays. This was compulsory, hence my visits to the library. I was wondering if I had read Treasure Island and now I am sure I did.

*Shirley in her school blazer, aged about 11*

Shirley and her schoolfriends ‘goofing around’ at age 14.
Shirley is in the centre and her friend Jill is on the left.

Thinking about What Katy Did, I just feel it was my book, not the library’s, but I cannot be sure. It might have been a little present for passing the 11+ from someone or from Sunday School. My family wasn’t able to buy me books, any more than Jill’s could. Money was short in those days in our working-class homes.

As I’ve said, the cinema played a big part in my life. It was time spent with my friends, who were so important to me, and obviously a lot cheaper than buying books! When we returned home, we would act out what we had seen on screen. Books did not come into it. But writing this has reminded me that I did go to see Pinocchio, Walt Disney’s cartoon from 1940, and I have a feeling I read the book of the film. I was very young then so maybe I read the book later. I just don’t know.

As I’ve already said, I was always encouraged to do well at school. Reading to me was about enjoyment, but schoolbooks, especially when I went to grammar school, were there to give me a good education and hopefully a good future. I was never told reading was a waste of time. I never re-read books then, and I am not keen on it now, but there are no books I wouldn’t dream of not reading again.

I do still have one book, a Bible, from those days. It wasn’t new and had little pressed flowers in it, here and there. This was a present from our local grocer’s daughter for passing my 11+. Now the thing that has clicked in my head is this. Over the years, with my husband being in the RAF, we have moved a lot, overseas and around the UK. We have cleared our home out numerous times with each move, but I have the Bible, never lost, still by my bedside. I’ve never been an avid reader of it. I just pick it up now and again and open it up wherever, read a small amount and put it back. So for the last 57 years as we have travelled around, it’s always been there.

Have books changed my life? Looking back, growing up, books have played a big part in my life for lots of reasons. I have read fiction, non-fiction, all kinds of books. We can get lost in books – some make you laugh, cry, tell us things we never knew, things that help, make us think.

The joys of being read to – Margaret B’s reading journey

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Val Hewson

Margaret B, who was born in 1960, came to Sheffield in the mid-1990s because of her job. Reading has long been a love, and here, in the second post for our new Next Generation project, she reflects on being read to as a child.

*Margaret and her twin brother in the back row, left and right respectively. Their younger brother and sister, also twins, sit in the front.*

My parents read to us from when we were tiny. There were four of us children born within 27 months (two sets of twins!) and our bedtime ritual was always bath, story, prayers and bed. We loved having a story read to us even when we could read ourselves. We all had the same story as we shared a bedroom (two sets of bunks) and took it in turns to choose which book our parents should read.

*The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, by Beatrix Potter. First edition (1905) (public domain)*

I remember hearing all the Beatrix Potter books regularly in rotation. My brothers liked Jeremy Fisher and Peter Rabbit while I liked Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and my sister liked The Tale of Two Bad Mice. These were interspersed with the Thomas the Tank Engine books and again we had our own favourites. Both my parents were excellent readers (one was a literature teacher and the other a clergyman); they loved books and words. So they also read poetry and rhymes to us – When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A A Milne and soon we were reciting them. I can still recite many of them today, 60 years later, and have strong visual memories of the illustrations – especially Christopher Robin and Alice at Buckingham Palace.

They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
‘A soldier’s life is terrible hard,’
Says Alice.
Buckingham Palace, by A A Milne

When I was about three my mother taught my twin and me to recite the whole of the ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech from Macbeth to keep us entertained. I hadn’t a clue what it was about but the rhythm and the words were wonderful.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Act V, scene 5, lines 16-27)

Even once we could read, the bedtime story was still a family ritual. We progressed to many other books including Swallows and Amazons and the Narnia books.

*Two of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome (image by Reading Sheffield)*

As a family, we were given some beautifully illustrated books as presents. It was the 1960s so they were often quite ‘modern’ illustrations. I remember a stunning, huge, hardback book of Greek and Roman myths with wonderful stylised illustrations of the gods. Double joy – great stories being read to us and a wonderful picture on every page to look at. I also remember the Oxford Illustrated Book of Nursery Rhymes – no cute pictures but vibrant semi-abstract paintings. I am sure that is why I have always loved modern art. I also remember the colourful if more traditional illustrations of Kathleen Hale’s Orlando the Marmalade Cat. This was my sister’s book and I was very jealous of it.

Listen with Mother on the radio was a must-listen every lunchtime and then when we got a bit older, we raced home from school to watch Jackanory. This BBC TV programme, which ran from the 1960s to the 1990s, introduced me to so many wonderful books which I went on to borrow from the library and read myself. It is hard to imagine these days, that they would make a whole TV programme with someone just reading a story from a book with the occasional illustration if there were any in the book. So many memorable books: Michael Bond’s Paddington series, The Owl Service by Alan Garner, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and the Mary Plain books by Gwynedd Rae, to mention just a few of the ones I remember so fondly. We also always watched the BBC classic serial on a Sunday afternoon which introduced me to the classics. I can still recall so many scenes from Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield. And when I was older I avidly watched both The Pallisers and the Barchester Towers chronicles. I did go on to read a couple of Trollope books after that but much preferred the TV version.

And of course we had books read to us every afternoon all the way through primary school. They were undoubtedly my favourite times at school, sitting quietly while being read to from excellent books. The stories read to us at school often overlapped with Jackanory books but I didn’t mind hearing them again. Two I remember very clearly from our later years in primary school were The Weird Stone of Brisingamen, also by Alan Garner, and The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe. One male teacher read us She by H Rider Haggard, which I found exciting if somewhat terrifying.

When I was eight, we moved house and no longer all shared a bedroom so my parents stopped reading to us every night and we all read our own books. But whenever we went on holiday, my parents would read to us again in the evenings. Holidays were always in a tent and I have such strong memories of us four being wrapped up safe and warm in our sleeping bags top to tail (to stop us from squabbling) while my parents took it in turn to read under the popping Calor Gas light, often to the sounds of wind and rain outside! This would be for about an hour every evening and they would always stop just before the ten o’clock news on the radio. We would doze off to the sound of Big Ben striking. I remember all of the Borrowers series by Mary Norton and as teenagers we got through the R L Stevenson books and Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. Eventually we graduated to Moby Dick by Herman Melville, though I don’t think we ever finished it!

When family camping holidays stopped, we still occasionally read aloud, this time taking it in turns to read a chapter. I discovered that I also enjoyed reading aloud as well as being read to. There was a memorable holiday in France with three generations of our family and we took it in turns to read from Great Expectations. Even my 12 year-old son took his turn and read his chapter fluently which surprised his proud mother! Dickens is a great author to read out loud.

*Pip’s first encounter with Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Illustration by John McLenan (public domain)*

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. ‘Look at me,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?’
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (chapter 8)

For many years, my mother would read to her friend Jo who had severe cerebral palsy and could not physically hold a book or turn the pages. But Jo loved literature so my mother would read classics and Booker prize winners to her every week. Around Christmas, my mother would invite Jo, her husband, my partner and me for dinner followed by a communal book reading. One year we read A Christmas Carol by Dickens and the next year we all took different parts in Twelfth Night.

*The title page from the first edition of A Christmas Carol (1843)*

Surprisingly, I am now not that keen on audiobooks or TV and film adaptations. I do listen to or watch them occasionally but I usually prefer to read them myself. Maybe it’s because I tend to listen to an audiobook while I’m doing housework, cooking or clearing my email inbox. But I also wonder if it is because, as a child, being read to was a communal activity with my parents, brothers and sister or classmates. We enjoyed the stories together and could talk about them afterwards. It was also a legitimate time in our days when we were allowed and indeed encouraged, to stop doing anything else, to sit down as a family or class and listen to wonderful stories instead of worrying about the to-do list and the undone laundry!

A whistle-stop tour of my bookshelves

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Val Hewson

by Stephen McClarence

Journalist Stephen McClarence’s articles in the Sheffield Telegraph and Yorkshire Post helped promote our original oral history project over a decade ago. We are delighted that, with his reading journey, we are launching a follow-up: Steel City Readers – the Next Generation, 1955-1975. We are collecting new reading journeys based on experiences of reading in Sheffield starting in the years 1955 to 1975. If you’d like to contribute a reading journey, you’ll find more information here. And many thanks to Stephen.

On my first morning as a journalist – more than 40 years ago, when newspapers were still thriving – the news editor of the Yorkshire paper I’d joined as a ‘graduate trainee’ handed me a book. He reckoned it had ‘local interest’.

‘Do me a 250-word review of this,’ he said, and went back to his desk to allocate reporters to cover police conference, magistrates court and the day’s quota of Golden Weddings.

Fresh from ‘uni’, as no-one then called it, I set about reading the book. It was pretty dull, but I ploughed on. Half an hour later, the news editor came over again, looking puzzled. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Reading the book, like you told me to,’ I said.

‘I didn’t tell you to read it,’ he said tetchily. ‘I told you to review it.’

So that put reading into perspective.

*The young Stephen already with a book in his hands*

I grew up in Sheffield in the 1950s and 1960s. The front room of our terraced house in Sharrow had a bookcase featuring a blue-bound set of Odhams editions of Dickens. Below it was a shelf of popular Book Club issues – Nevil Shute, H B Kaye, Stella Gibbons – with their sometimes surreal dust-jacket illustrations and proud boast that they published books for 2/6d (13p) that would otherwise cost up to 12/6d (63p).

Across the room was a bureau whose glass-fronted bookcase housed several feet of World Books, an imprint with more serious literary ambitions than the Book Club – Graham Greene, Winifred Holtby, Somerset Maugham – and more sober dust-jackets.

I’m not sure how much my parents had read these books but, well, as Anthony Powell puts in his epic A Dance to the Music of Time, ‘Books do furnish a room.’

As a child, I naturally ignored this adult fare and read the regular children’s (actually boys’) books: Just William, Bunter, Jennings, all inhabiting a world remote from my own working-class experience. We didn’t, for instance, have ‘beaks’ at my grammar school.

The book that most resonated with my own upbringing was The Family from One End Street, Eve Garnett’s enchanting depiction of the working-class life of the Ruggles family. And every Christmas brought another Rupert Bear annual. All these years later, the illustrations seem almost psychedelically weird: just what was that little bear on?

All these books – apart from Rupert Bear – were available just down the road, shelves of them, in Highfield library.

What a wonder this imposing Victorian building was, what a massive ‘enabler’. Year after year, I climbed its stone steps up to a doorway topped by a quotation from Thomas Carlyle: ‘That there should be one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.’

Inside, in an atmosphere of sepulchral silence, were sturdy, highly polished tables where retired men in gabardine macs read the newspapers. A flight of alarmingly steep stairs led to the children’s library, with its seemingly endless shelves of Collins Classics and True Books (I longed for Untrue Books), all protected from careless young hands by sturdy transparent plastic jackets.

In school holidays, particularly on rainy days when there was no incentive to ‘play out’, I would sometimes visit the library twice a day: in the morning to choose a couple of books to last me until the afternoon, when I went back to exchange them for a couple more.

The newsagent across the road from us sold me comics (Beano, Dandy, Beezer, Topper). Plus the wonderfully engaging and informative Look and Learn. I duly looked and learned – about Arthur and Excalibur, The Story of a Seed and The History of the A4 (the road not the paper size).

Later, doing A Levels and grappling with Chaucer, Molière and the Thirty Years War, I had plenty of ‘free periods’ in the afternoons. Suddenly enthused by classical music, I regularly took a bus into the city centre to sit for hours reading The Stereo Record Guide in the Central Library. On reflection this seems a curious way to have spent my late adolescence.

Years before, my parents had bought me The Book of Knowledge, eight heavy red-and-cream-bound volumes (A to Bon, announced the spines, Boo to Cro, Crue to Gera…). Published ‘to provide the inquiring mind with accurate information told in an interesting style’, the series ranged wide.

The photographs on one double-page spread offered not merely a ‘Model of a Proposed German Monorail System’ but also ‘Haddock, Relation of the Cod’ (as though that was the haddock’s only claim to fame).

I’ve just flicked through one of the volumes (still on my shelves) and recognised many of the illustrations – ‘Humming birds on the wing’ on the left-hand page, ‘Hull Docks and wharves seen from the air’ on the right.

And there was Walt Disney’s Worlds of Nature, with its saturatedly coloured photographs of ‘the alert, intelligent raccoon’, a few pages after a gladiatorial photograph showing how ‘two queen bees, piping shrilly, battle fiercely to the death’ and the invaluable tip that ‘the bullfrog’s voice is the biggest part of him’.

On the flyleaf, I see I wrote my name rather hesitantly in ballpoint pen on my eighth birthday. And I’m afraid I subsequently committed my old news editor’s cardinal sin: I read the book.

Launching Steel City Readers

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Val Hewson

In June 2023, Liverpool University Press published Steel City Readers: Reading for Pleasure in Sheffield, 1925-1955 by Mary Grover, who founded the Reading Sheffield project. On 12 July, a special event to launch the book was held at the Central Library in Sheffield. The 90 or so guests included some of the 65 people whose interviews are at the heart of the book, along with their families and Mary’s own family, friends and colleagues.

Chris Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University, who has supported Reading Sheffield and Mary’s work from the very beginning, welcomed everyone to the event.

Mary described the experience of researching and writing Steel City Readers:

Writing is almost always a lonely process. Whatever you are writing, however supportive your colleagues and companions, you are alone with the next sentence. But, however confused or doubtful, I have never been involved in a writing project in which I have felt less alone. Never have so many people contributed to a book I have produced. … When I was, as a friend put it, ‘becalmed’, I would reread stories like Kath and Judith’s, and their energy and resourcefulness were an inspiration.

The stories Mary and her colleagues drew out of the 65 readers featured in Steel City Readers are fascinating accounts of the wonder of reading. The interviews ‘helped our readers create their own narrative structures and become eloquent narrators of their own lives’ – something they had rarely, if ever, known before.

Irene had gained a place at grammar school and was reading A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, but it was the annuals given to her at Christmas that helped establish her reading fluency. The reason why she cherished these annuals till the end of her life and the reason why my listeners lit up when they held one in their hands again after 70 years, is the part that annuals played in the narrative of their lives. Like no other book, an annual is a precise marker of development. We know the year, the month, the day when we read it, Christmas Day 1931 in the case of Irene’s Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. Its physical presence is associated with those who surrounded us when we read it and those who gave it to us, at some expense. Its inscription brings back the memory of a loved relative or friend, often an unmarried aunt.

Here is Mary’s talk in full.

Chris then introduced Professor Dame Karin Barber, a friend of Mary’s. Karin, an anthropologist, spoke about reading the book in draft:

… I was totally gripped by it. It transported me into mid-twentieth century Sheffield – not just into the place, distinctive as it is, and the time, before and after the Second World War, but also – most importantly – the people: the 65 participants in the project talking about their memories of books and reading, their enjoyment of all kinds of literature, their practical strategies for getting hold of books to read.

Steel City Readers, she continued, was ‘a highly original and valuable contribution to social history’.

Oral history, done like this, reaches parts of the past that no other research can. It preserves and re-activates historical memories that would otherwise be lost – but which illuminate big themes of social change, class, cultural history, with unique vividness. The Reading Sheffield project – and the book that came out of it – are pioneers. It’s to be hoped that they will have started a movement and that more projects as exciting as this one will follow.

Here is Karin’s talk in full.

Reading Sheffield celebrated the publication of Steel City Readers by presenting copies to all the interviewees or their families. This was made possible by the generosity of those who donated to the project, including Sheffield-based Gripple and The James Neill Trust Fund, the broadcaster, Robin Ince, who did two fundraisers, and many individual supporters.

Mary Grover and the Reading Sheffield committee would like to thank Sheffield Libraries – in particular, Library Manager Alexis Filby – for hosting the launch in the Central Library. Given the importance of public libraries in Steel City Readers, this was the perfect venue.

Thanks to Lizz Tuckerman and Val Hewson for the photos of the launch, and to Karin and Mary for permission to include their speeches.

The paperback of Steel City Readers is available from all good booksellers. The e-book can be downloaded free from Liverpool University Press.

Two Wadsley readers: the reading lives of Anne and John Robinson

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Val Hewson

We are glad to welcome two new interviewees, Anne and John Robinson, both born in 1949. This reading journey is based on notes taken during the interview. There is no audio file or transcript.

By Mary Grover

When, in January 2023, I gave a talk in Hillsborough Library about reading in Wadsley, I expected to see Anne and Alan B whose reading memories from both Wadsley and Rotherham contributed to my understanding of reading in Sheffield in the Fifties. It was good to see Anne and Alan but it was an added bonus to meet two readers new to Reading Sheffield: John and Anne Robinson. The two couples are not only great readers but they are all key members of Wadsley and Loxley Commoners. WALC is a voluntary group of mainly local people who share a great love for Wadsley and Loxley Commons, a nature reserve to the north-west of Sheffield. The four friends work together in preserving and sharing this unique common land, once an industrial landscape where gannister was mined.

Anne and John would seem to have little time for reading but in fact they read every day. When they met with me and Sue Roe in the café of the Millennium Gallery, they shared reading histories that were very different from each other’s but they agree that they now influence each other’s tastes. Not only do they read books about the natural environment and history but they also share a taste for detective fiction, especially the novels of Anthony Horowitz. I felt that Anne was the sterner critic. The endings of detective novels were measured against those of Agatha Christie who ‘always got it right’. John loves biographies. He says that’s because he is a ‘nosey parker’.

Both Anne and John came from families which valued reading. As a girl, Anne McConnachie was given many opportunities to read. Her Sunday school introduced her to Bible stories. She was bought comics. Relatives, aunts especially, helped her acquire books of her own. At Christmas she was given annuals: Girls’ Crystal and School Friend. One of Anne’s aunties used to buy comics for her, her sister and a nephew. ‘Every week there was Girl for my sister, the Swift for me and the Eagle for the nephew. Me and my sister used to have a look at the cover of the Eagle (we weren’t so keen on the Mekon).’ Anne’s mother made sure that her daughters recorded the name of the relative who gave them an annual as a Christmas gift; each was inscribed in the front cover. A book was an object of value.

Anne’s mother was not only in a book club but she took her daughters with her on her hunt for popular fiction. She went to the cinema and enjoyed the thrillers of the Thirties and Forties with actors such as Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart and Tyrone Power. She read John Creasey and Raymond Chandler. Neither John nor Anne can remember seeing their mothers read. Both felt that when the family were around their mothers would have been too busy with domestic duties to do much reading themselves. If they sat down, they often took up ‘something useful’ like their knitting rather than a book.

As children, both Anne and John found the novels of Enid Blyton a delight. John probably got his from the mobile library in Dore, where he also found the Bobbsey Twins, mysteries and adventures written by the American Laura Lee Hope (a pseudonym for multiple authors). Anne loved Blyton’s The Faraway Tree and recalls the refrain ‘Wisha, wisha’, the noise of the wind in the trees. She could imagine going to the distant lands conjured by Blyton’s story. It was perhaps this book that inspired her love of magical stories and mythology. She realises now that the horrors of Greek mythology were just accepted as a child, their cruelty and monstrousness just taken for granted.

Another shared experience was the work of Charles Dickens. Anne found Great Expectations a very satisfying read when it was set for O level. John found Dickens heavy on the detail but ploughed on with Nicholas Nickleby and enjoyed the story. After he had finished reading it, he got a sense of achievement and still remembers it. Anne recently enjoyed A Christmas Carol. Though neither John nor Anne became regular readers of Dickens, they value the novels of his that they have they read.

One of the reasons for John’s difficulty with the sheer bulk of Dickens’ novels was possibly undiagnosed dyslexia. As for many children of his generation, the lack of diagnosis led teachers to conclude that he was not interested in reading. His primary school teacher was unconcerned by his lack of progress, often sending John and his friend to garden and to shovel snow when it needed clearing.

*The 16-year-old John at South Yorkshire Sailing Club in the Sixties*

John was determined to learn, and to learn from books, in spite of his early difficulties with reading. His intense curiosity and determination have led him to be the avid reader that he is today. In spite of the red ink that covered the compositions that he so loved to write in primary school, he persisted and when he got to Silverdale School, in the late Fifties, he found the environment he needed to learn. Not only was he encouraged to read but the newly built secondary modern had good facilities including a library. John joined the chess club, sang in the choir and played in the orchestra. He learned to read music. He aimed to catch up and he coped well. His determination is reflected in the way he reads. As he puts it, ‘I will go the extra mile if the book is a bit difficult or slow’.

As a reader Anne had no obstacles to overcome. In her last year at Philadelphia Primary School, her headteacher found that she had a reading age of 15. She always found reading easy and her home was filled with print. Her dad worked nights for the Sheffield Telegraph and brought copies home. She remembers her mum reading them, building up piles that couldn’t be thrown out. Her mother read both the Telegraph and the Star.

Anne enjoyed Sunday School and the Bible stories she heard there. Upperthorpe Library was also an important source of books when the family lived in Kelvin. She probably went with her mother and sister.

Anne loved the library – the big round tables and the chairs – but she was a little in awe of the librarians. She wouldn’t have dared ask them for suggestions about what she might read but she can’t remember needing suggestions. She could take out five at once, would take them home, sit by the fire and read them all at a gallop. She can still do an efficient skim of a book if necessary.

As for many of our readers, an illness gave Anne increased opportunities to read. When she was 16, she got shingles and read whatever came to hand. She discovered A Pocketful of Rye and then They Came to Baghdad and became a big fan of Agatha Christie.

Though Anne went to a grammar school, Brincliffe, she can’t remember the school having a library, unlike the much better equipped secondary modern where John went.

Different though Anne and John’s reading histories have been, it is clear that what made them readers was the value their own families set on books. They both soon realised that books opened up opportunities to satisfy their natural curiosity, their imagination and their determination to make something of their lives. John’s adult confidence with print enabled him to be a committee man (one of many is the committee of the local Royal Society of Protection of Birds). All importantly, this confidence enabled him to run the family loan business. John’s command of records and paperwork was essential to building up the company’s reputation for reliability and trustworthiness. Anne thinks John should write a history of his working life. She suggests, ‘It could be called “The Loan Arranger”’.

Class and social mobility in Daphne du Maurier’s novels

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

Here is the last of the guest blogs from Sheffield Hallam student, Ellie Jackson, about the novels of Daphne du Maurier. This is part of Ellie’s final year project. Here she sets out her thoughts on the issue of class.

I will be discussing Daphne du Maurier’s most famous novels; Rebecca (1938), Jamaica Inn (1935), and My Cousin Rachel (1951). The female protagonist in all of these novels are victims of the class division, but particularly in Rebecca.

Mrs de Winter’s decision to marry a man above her own class challenges the rules for social mobility, but it is important to consider whether this was Du Maurier’s intention. Not only does her decision challenge the rules for mobility, but also the expectations of a woman’s role in marriage, and whether the woman should choose herself or conform to those expectations. We quickly realise that the narrator’s decision to marry was not actually her decision at all. Maxim gives her the choice: ‘Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me.’ (du Maurier, 1938, 6). This suggests that a woman of her status cannot have the privilege of choice. It’s a matter of which upper class individual to be dependent upon.

Mrs de Winter is aware of the class division in her marriage, and of her lack of confidence and awkwardness. but eventually realises her ‘intense desire to please’ (du Maurier, 1938, 16), especially when it comes to Mrs Danvers, the late Rebecca’s maid. Mrs Danvers is a constant reminder of Rebecca’s presence in Manderley, retelling stories of her perfectly proper mistress and insulted by her replacement. We do not even learn the name of our protagonist throughout the entire novel – only the powerful Mr de Winter and his well-bred, upper class wife Rebecca, whom he could not control, unlike the second Mrs de Winter. Even before our narrator is betrothed to Maxim, her social status is reinforced through her paid companionship to the obnoxious Mrs Van Hopper. The narrator is very aware of her social class and what others think of her when travelling with Mrs Van Hopper. She wishes that she were ‘a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls’ (du Maurier, 1938, 5). She makes her wish to be someone else early on in the novel, which foreshadows the identity she will replace – Rebecca – when she arrives at Manderley, something she will regret ever wishing for.

Similarly, in My Cousin Rachel, du Maurier demonstrates the class difference between Rachel and Philip, her nephew by marriage. He is completely perplexed by Rachel’s desire to make her own way in the world without the financial stability of a husband, and suggests that he would prefer to pay her for doing nothing. Rachel’s independence ultimately proves to be a threat to the social class she now belongs to, after her marriage to Ambrose. Throughout the novel, there is the uncertain question of whether Rachel is genuine, or if she murdered Ambrose in order to inherit his wealth and estate, to send money out of the country and leave the family in debt. Rachel becomes a villain as she is accused of poisoning Philip suddenly after he gives up his inheritance for her. Is she, however, presented this way for other reasons? Is the thought of a woman with a new upper-class status, being independent with her finances and refusing to marry, so hard to believe that she must be a villain? Rachel is a defiant character. She is difficult to relate to as a woman who has moved through the classes and has a strong, powerful influence on a man. With Philip’s inability to accept Rachel defying convention, he allows himself to be complicit in her death.

Du Maurier ultimately suggests the determination of society to eradicate those who pose a threat to societal norms – especially those who aim for a higher social class. Mary Yellen in Jamaica Inn is another of du Maurier’s female characters who defy the societal norms of women being completely dependent on a man, as she is happy to continue her free, quiet life on the farm following the death of her mother. However, this independence is not unusual for a woman of Mary’s lower class and the main class difference that we see in Jamaica Inn is the type of work her uncle Joss undertakes. Joss is not an upper class man with a good economic situation, and so his dangerous smuggling operation contrasts the comfortable lives of the men in the other novels (despite their often endangering the lives of the women they know). The characters in Jamaica Inn are much lower in the social order than those in Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel, and therefore have less security and may have to take risks. The dark, depressing and abysmal dwelling in which Jamaica Inn is set, confirms the impact of the lower social class in terms of the lacking opportunities and freedom. The smuggling operation is not only a symbol of a lower social class and the pressure to have money in their pockets, but their lack of freedom to live regular lives.

*Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) and Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) (Creative Commons licence)*

*Francis Davey (Ben Daniels) and Mary Yellan (Jessica Brown Findlay) in the 2014 adaptation of Jamaica Inn (Creative Commons licence)*

Here are Ellie’s previous blogs: Daphne du Maurier and the Gothic and Rebecca, Mary and Rachel: Daphne du Maurier’s unconventional, strong women.

Bibliography

Du Maurier. D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.

Daphne du Maurier and the Gothic

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

Our guest blogger, Ellie Jackson, a student at Sheffield Hallam University, is looking at the novels of Daphne du Maurier for her final year project. Here are her thoughts about how du Maurier used the aesthetic of the Gothic to great effect in her novels.

The first recognised Gothic novel was written by Horace Walpole in 1764, The Castle of Otranto. The traditional Gothic novel has a number of recognisable key characteristics: death and decay, haunted castles and remote landscapes, intense emotion or fear in the reader. Since the 18th century, the idea of a new, modern Gothic has emerged, and the castle is no longer an essential element to the literature. The narratives of the modern Gothic focus on ‘the urban present, refracting contemporary concerns through the lens of a literature of terror’ (Dryden, 2003).

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is an exemplar model of the modern Gothic; it contains a large mansion, a murder, a great fire and a sinister servant. The pre-eminent Gothic trope is the setting: Manderley, the colossal mansion which the heroine, Mrs de Winter, comes to know after marrying Maxim de Winter. Even her first impressions of Manderley are negative, and leave an impact on her perceptions. The ‘gates crashing’, ‘serpent-like drive’ and the ‘roof of branches’ (du Maurier, 1938, 7) envision entrapment and a sense of a hidden evil. The emphasis on a picturesque landscape casts Manderley with a supernatural mystique, with du Maurier exploring her protagonist’s feelings of sublimity and her relationship with her natural surroundings. Mrs de Winter’s inquisitiveness reflects the twentieth century curiosity and thirst for the unknown. Du Maurier plays on this curiosity in the novel – for example, the murder mystery and the supernatural.

The use of the weather in Gothic literature is important, with storms seen as omens of evil, representing the inner self of the protagonist in externalising fears and conflict. The fog has a significant role in the novel, both literally and figuratively. For much of the novel, the fog completely blinds the narrator, Mrs de Winter, but once the truth of Rebecca is revealed, ‘The mist entered my nostrils and lay upon my lips rank and sour. It was stifling, like a blanket, like an anaesthetic. I was beginning to forget about being unhappy, and about loving Maxim. I was beginning to forget Rebecca,’ (du Maurier, 1938, 18). The lingering presence of the late Mrs de Winter was like the fog, clouding the protagonist’s vision and judgement. However, it is not suggested that Rebecca’s presence in Manderley disappears as the fog does. Even when Manderley is burned at the end, the foreboding first line of the novel, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’ (du Maurier, 1938, 1) suggests not that the presence of Rebecca has been destroyed with it, but that both the house and Rebecca still haunt Mrs de Winter and her husband.

*Manderley burning in the 2020 film adaptation of Rebecca (Creative Commons licence)*

Jamaica Inn encompasses similar conventional Gothic tropes, involving ‘a frail protagonist in terrible danger’, because she ‘is placed in a hostile, threatening, mysterious environment, usually so prodigiously large that it dwarfs her; she is made prisoner, she is threatened by individuals who should protect her, parents and parent-figures’ (Grellet, Valentin, 1996). This describes Mary Yellen, as she becomes the perfect Gothic protagonist on her arrival at Jamaica Inn and is threatened both by her (new) parent figures and the house itself. Although the house is not a ruined castle as pictured in The Castle of Otranto, it embodies characteristics of the traditional Gothic setting, with dark secrets hidden within it, secret rooms, doors and passages which du Maurier uses to build the mystery and workings of Jamaica Inn.

*Jamaica Inn, as seen in the 2014 BBC adaptation (Creative Commons licence)*

While there are conventional elements of the Gothic seen in both Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, du Maurier portrays My Cousin Rachel as the exact opposite. Traditionally, the Gothic novel features a young, naïve heroine whose inexperience puts her in a disadvantaged position with her older male superior. However, this is not the case for Rachel. Though the Gothic trope of the large manor house on the Ashley estate is present in the novel, it has little power compared to the character of Rachel. She is a headstrong, sexually overt, (eventually) economically stable woman with little need for a man. Du Maurier has drawn on Rachel’s personality in this way to encompass fears and curiosity within the reader about the ‘wicked woman’ who is thought to have murdered her husband and attempted to murder Philip too. Both Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel feature the female villain in their stories, but are they really villains at all? Both women have a disruptive effect on the narrators in their novels, but are their actions actually villainous, or are the impressions offered to the reader unfair from the perspective of other characters?

Mystery, suspense and death are present in all of these novels: the lingering death of Rebecca; the dark, dangerous mystery around Jamaica Inn and the activities undertaken there; and the death of Ambrose and poisoning of Philip all convey traditional and modern elements of the Gothic.

Ellie’s blogs on Class and Social Mobility in the novels of Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca, Rachel and Mary: du Maurier’s Strong, Unconventional Women.

Bibliography

Du Maurier, D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.

Dryden, L. (2003). The Modern Gothic. In: The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Rebecca, Mary and Rachel: Daphne du Maurier’s unconventional, strong women

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

It’s good to welcome back guest blogger, Ellie Jackson, from Sheffield Hallam University. Ellie has already written her reading journey and a review of Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers for our blog. Now she is looking at the novels of Daphne du Maurier for her final year project and, as part of that, is writing three blogs for us. Here is the first.

Daphne du Maurier had already published four novels and two biographies by the age of 30 and went on to write many more novels, short stories etc. Search her name in Google, and the first three book titles to show are Rebecca (1938), Jamaica Inn (1935) and My Cousin Rachel (1951) as her most famous novels. Rebecca is undoubtedly the most recognised novel of the three, with multiple film adaptations and written ‘sequels’ by different authors, such as Mrs de Winter (1993) by Susan Hill or Rebecca’s Tale (2001) by Sally Beauman.

Throughout this blog I will be discussing how du Maurier represents her female protagonist in relation to the gender identities presented in these popular fictions. Du Maurier both demonstrates and also subverts the conventional views of femininity through the use of her protagonists.

In Rebecca, this is particularly suggested by the hidden character of Rebecca herself. In some ways, it is suggested that Maxim de Winter’s first wife is an evil villain, a woman who posed a great threat to the conventional rules of female conduct and therefore judged by her unfeminine behaviour and her subversion of the female ideal of pleasing her husband. But critics have suggested that Rebecca was not only a victim of sexism, but of her husband too. The novel is an important early work of feminism, certainly presenting the ways in which the male character dominates. We only ever hear Maxim’s side of the story. Rebecca is never given a voice to speak her truth. Is Maxim the real villain? A controlling husband who expects his wife to behave as an obedient child and when she refuses to abide by his rules, becomes hateful and lashes out at her? Though absent in the novel, Rebecca has a strong presence throughout. Our impression of her becomes increasingly negative and we are made to believe that she is the primary antagonist of the novel, a skilful manipulator having extramarital affairs, and Maxim is portrayed as her helpless victim. Is the novel ahead of its time in terms of gender roles or has it aged badly? Rebecca is a woman who refused to let marriage destroy her right to identity, but she is also judged according to conventional rules for female behaviour that by modern standards don’t carry much currency.

*Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) and Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film, Rebecca* *(Creative Commons licence)*

My Cousin Rachel is a second novel by du Maurier that undoubtedly demonstrates this feminist ideology through her independent protagonist Rachel. Du Maurier makes very clear that in the only sex scene in the novel, Rachel is at the height of her power. From the beginning of the novel, Philip lays down his thoughts on the fundamental rules of female behaviour, in which he suggests women are emotional, unpredictable, ‘erratic and unstable’ (du Maurier, 1951, 5) in contrast to the rationality of a man. Rachel’s expression of her comfortable and overt sexuality completely bewilders Philip, and ultimately du Maurier uses his ambivalence to demonstrate that the power of a man is much stronger than the sexual power Rachel exhibits. This is made evident through Rachel’s inability to become pregnant. Sex is independently an act of pleasure rather than a function of marriage or family, and it is definitively on her own terms as Rachel uses it to ‘thank [him], that’s all’ (du Maurier, 1951, 22). So Rachel denying Philip marriage after they slept together turns him rather violent, emphasising his intolerance of her sexual power by attempting to physically overpower her.

*Rachel (Rachel Weisz) and Philip (Sam Claflin) discussing marriage in Roger Michell’s 2017 film, My Cousin Rachel* *(Creative Commons licence)*

The subversion of conventional views of femininity is further shown through du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. Mary, her protagonist, exhibits a profound loathing for the culturally defined identities which society has given to women. She attempts to ignore her own femaleness, questioning ‘why were women such fools?’ (du Maurier, 1935, 5) in relation to the cruel, powerful character of her uncle Joss. Despite Mary’s self-sufficient character, the lack of identity of a woman under patriarchal influence is demonstrated when she ends up at Jamaica Inn. The masculine power of Joss Merlyn is used as a means to control the women in the novel, as they are ‘trained by constant cruelty to implicit obedience’. (du Maurier, 1935, 2).

*Film poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 film, Jamaica Inn, with Maureen O’Hara as Mary Yellen. In the background, on the far right, is Leslie Banks as Joss Merlyn, Mary’s cruel uncle*. *(Fair use)*

Throughout all three of Du Maurier’s most popular novels, it is fair to suggest that she was ahead of her time in terms of gender identity, with her attempts to subvert the traditional societal roles given to women through her female protagonists, but ultimately positioning the male characters in such a way that they will always be superior. The lives of women are in the hands of the men in each of the novels. Mary is the only female protagonist that makes it out of the hands of her male superior. The same cannot be said for the characters of Rebecca and Rachel, who are both murdered for their ‘crimes’ against traditional feminine standards.

Here is Ellie’s second blog, on Daphne du Maurier’s use of the Gothic, and here is her third, on class in du Maurier’s novels.

Bibliography

Du Maurier, D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.

Judith Warrender’s Reading Journey

Posted on February 12, 2023 by Mary Grover

By Mary Grover

Judith was interviewed by Rebecca Fisher in February 2013. She was born Judith Hancock in 1950 and grew up in Page Hall, Sheffield, between 1950 and 1972.

Two minutes from my house was the grand building of Page Hall which at that time was an orphanage, a feature of many a children’s story! The fact that I never saw anyone emerge from it added to its mystery!

*Mrs Hancock in Firth Park with baby Judith, her son and a friend. Shortly after this must have been taken, Judith spent three months in a baby home because of her mother’s post-natal depression.*

Judith’s mother was determined her daughter would read. Thanks to her, the little girl joined Firth Park Library when she was five. The first book Judith had out was Teddy Robinson. Her mother mainly borrowed Agatha Christies. Judith’s father was a tram driver, working long, demanding shifts. It was her mother who read to her.

*Judith and her brother playing in the street*

Judith went to a good junior school, Hucklow Road. She recalls a set of folding bookshelves (configured like a pasting table) which circulated from the City Libraries. Though the pupils weren’t offered a range of subjects, they were prepared for the eleven plus exam. Judith passed the eleven plus and gained a place at Abbeydale Girls’ Grammar, a prestigious grammar school, two bus journeys away on the other side of the city.

Judith had few books at home. She borrowed lots of Enid Blytons and popular fiction from the library but didn’t possess copies of her own.

Well, my family, you know, just didn’t have the money to buy paper or books. So, the only books I got really, as far as I remember, were Christmas annuals, you know, my comic, the Bunty, and the annuals for the comics that you took all year.

The only book she remembers reading which reflected anything like the life she led was Eve Garnett’s The Family from One End Street (1937). She realises that Garnett herself didn’t come from the kind of family she described, but she finds the stories charming and beautifully illustrated, by Garnett herself.

I suppose I like that they are homely. I like the homely nature of them…I liked homely stories, you know Milly Molly Mandy, it was the same, you know…she lived in a thatched cottage.

Judith’s dad used to read the Pears Cyclopaedia, and the Bible, because of his brother: ‘His brother was a bit fanatical’.

Otherwise we would watch telly, as we all lived in one room, you see. That was another thing, we didn’t have our own bedrooms where we entertained friends…we all lived in one room with the telly on. So that again conditioned what you did. My mother lit a fire in the front room to do homework – I enjoyed staying there studying all evening.

At Hucklow Road Judith made friends with the daughter of an English Teacher at Firth Park Boys’ Grammar School. She discovered a house could be full of books. The Cook family was a great influence on Judith. Stanley Cook had studied English at Oxford, tutored by J R R Tolkien. Judith went round to her friend’s a lot.

Mrs Cook was a teacher too and taught Judith to swim. She also taught her the longest word Judith knew at the time – ‘sesquipedalian’! The Cooks’ three children were bought Puffin books and ‘sugar paper’ to draw on. Her friend, Sarah Cook, would spend days with Judith, creating multiple copies of little magazines – ‘with carbon paper you know…it was magic’.

*Children’s Library at Firth Park in the 1940s/1950s (Ref no: u02884, Picture Sheffield)*

Judith lived near Firth Park. ‘I spent half of my childhood in the park, which was just at the top of our road, and half of it in the library.’ The Junior Library recruited children to be library helpers, each with their own special badge. Judith longed to be a library helper.

So I used to gaze at other children, I just never had the courage to ask to be one. But I used to play at libraries at home. And I had a little chest of drawers, which I shall show you a picture of, it was a tiny spice chest, about this sort of size [9” x 6”] at home which a neighbour had given me, with tiny drawers with the spice names on. And I used to cut out little cards for the few books I had, so they would be in these drawers and I would get them out like this. [Judith demonstrates flicking through cards.]

She used to ‘play library’ and still has the little chest in her home.

Firth Park Library also put on films for children in the week. Judith and her brother used go on their own in the dark, about a quarter of an hour’s walk.

Trips to church were formative – the services and Sunday school. Hymns introduced Jude to a wealth of new words, adult vocabulary. School introduced her to more poetry. Judith has never forgotten one particular poem by Robert Louis Stevenson in A Child’s Garden of Verses. She still enjoys ‘From a Railway Carriage’ with its headlong rhythm and energy. She remembers her teacher ‘pumping us to read this poem because it’s very onomatopoeic’.

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
From a Railway Carriage, by Robert Louis Stevenson, in A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

When Judith got to Abbeydale Girls’ Grammar School her reading changed, partly because there was less time. The two-bus journey took an hour, usually spent chatting with her mates. She remembers reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities on the bus, but that was all.

You know with my paper round, then my tea, then homework, then it was bedtime, it was a tiring day. So, I don’t recall reading much as a teenager because we used to have, like, three subjects homework a night.

The subjects she studied, German, French and English, absorbed her. When she got to the sixth form she was put in for four A levels and two ‘S’ (Special) levels, each ‘S’ level having five set texts. A lot of her German and French texts were from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her twentieth century French texts (Sartre and Camus) made a ‘big impression’. In English she studied Emma, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and a modern anthology of twentieth century poetry, including T S Eliot, Auden and MacNeice.

In her adulthood Judith has done a huge amount of community work. She is an expert gardener and goes regularly to Nepal to teach. When she has time she reads biography, books about nature and history rather than fiction, though she very much enjoys Annie Proulx and ‘wacky stuff’ like Malcolm Pryce’s Welsh noir spoofs on detective novels like Raymond Chandler’s (try Last Tango in Aberystwyth). Perhaps the book that had the biggest influence on her as an adult was a collection of sayings about nature from native American people. It is called Black Elk Speaks by John G Neihardt.

Judith’s husband, Paul, was very well read and bought a lot of books.

He left school at 16, with only two O levels; then he did an English A level as a mature student. And he, he was very much self-taught actually. I mean when he was ill, three years ill, he read the whole of Proust.

Three weeks after Paul died, during the bitter snowy 2010 winter, when post deliveries seized up, a parcel arrived for Judith. Inside it was a book from a series that was very dear to her heart when she was about eight or ten. Paul had ordered it for her. There are fourteen books by Will Scott about the Cherrys. Jude has met few people who have heard of the books. They are about a father devising adventures for his children – ‘not very long but I just loved them!’

They had these lovely diagrams in them, they have these lovely maps and there were sometimes little word puzzles. I don’t know if there is one in this one… [flicks through] Oh! that’s like a treasure hunt thing where they have to follow a route.