Hungarian literature

HUNGARIAN LITERATURE
AN HISTORICAL & CRITICAL SURVEY
BY EMIL REICH DOCTOR JURIS Author of “History of Civilization,” “Historical Atlas Of Modern History,” “Græco-Roman Institutions,” etc.
WITH AN AUTHENTIC MAP OF HUNGARY


The present book is the first attempt in the English language at a connected story of Hungarian literature. The remarkable success achieved by a few Magyar novelists in English-speaking countries, together with the growing recognition of the international importance of Hungary as a state and a nation, seem to justify the assumption, that the Anglo-Saxon peoples too, are not unwilling to learn more about the intellectual life of the Magyars than can be found in the ordinary books of reference.
The main object of the author, himself a Hungarian, has been to impress the reader with a vivid picture of the chief currents and the leading personalities of Hungarian literature. Magyar literature is too vast a topic to be fully treated within the very limited space of a small essay like the present. By introducing the comparative method of historical investigation and analysis, by means of which Hungarian works are measured, contrasted to, or compared with works of English, French, German, Italian or the ancient classical writers, the reader may obtain, it is hoped, a more life-like idea of a literature hitherto unknown to him.
No nation outside Hungary has facilities of studying Magyar literature as great as those offered to the English public in the incomparable library of the British Museum. Nearly every Magyar work of any importance may be found there, and the catalogues of those works are, in the strict sense of the word, correct. This latter circumstance is chiefly owing to the labours of an English scholar, whose name no Hungarian can pronounce without a feeling of reverential gratitude. Mr. E. D. Butler, of the British Museum, the author of the only authentic and comprehensive, if small, English work on Hungary (his article “ Hungary ” in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica ) is, to our knowledge, the only English student of Magyar language and literature who has thoroughly grasped the philology and spirit of that language and the distinctive qualities of Magyar writers. He will, we trust, pardon our patriotism for shocking his excessive modesty by this public acknowledgment of his merit.