Chatto & Windus's List of Books, July 1878

“ I say we have despised literature; what do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body: now, a good book contains such food inexhaustible: it is provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men’s dinners are. We are few of us put to such a trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wiser people forget that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying. ”—Sesame and Lilies; or, King’s Treasures.
Square 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, gilt edges, with Coloured Frontispiece and numerous Illustrations, 10 s. 6 d.
By Mrs. H. R. Haweis, Author of “Chaucer for Children.” With nearly One Hundred Illustrations by the Author.
“ A most interesting book, full of valuable hints and suggestions.... If young ladies would but lend their ears for a little to Mrs. Haweis, we are quite sure that it would result in their being at once more tasteful, more happy, and more healthy than they now often are, with their false hair, high heels, tight corsets, and ever so much else of the same sort. ”—Nonconformist.