Books are undoubtedly cursed, and rendered unreadable in a new sense. I don't know how many years it is since I was informed that Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "L'Ève Future" was a really fine novel. I bought it, and I was so upset, in my narrow youthfulness, to find that the author had made a hero of Thomas Alva Edison, and called him by his name, that I could not accomplish more than two chapters. Later I was again informed that "L'Ève Future" was a really fine novel, and I had another brief tussle with it, and was vanquished by its dullness. I received a third warning, and started yet again, and disliked the book rather less, and then I completely lost it in a removal. After months or years it mysteriously turned up, like a fox-terrier who has run off on an errand of his own. But I did not resume it. And then after another long interval the idea that I absolutely must read "L'Ève Future" gathered force in my mind, and I decided that the next time I went away for a week-end I would take it with me. This was in France. I took it away with me. I read a hundred pages on the outward journey and I got on terms with "L'Ève Future." "Ce livre m'attendait," as a certain French novelist said when he read "Tom Jones." On the return journey I was deep buried in "L'Ève Future," when a fearful jolting suddenly began to rock the saloon carriage in which I was. The jolting grew worse, very much worse. Women screamed. I saw my stick fly out of the rack above my head across the carriage. The door leading to the corridor jumped off its hinges. Then shattered glass fell in showers, and I saw an old lady beneath an arm-chair and a table. The shape of the carriage altered. And then, after an enormous crash, equilibrium was established amid the cries of human anguish. I had clung to the arms of my seat and was unhurt, but there were four wounded in the carriage. My eye-glasses were still sticking on my nose. Saying to myself that I must keep calm, I put them carefully away, and began to help to get people out of the wreck. It was not until I looked about for my belongings that I saw that the corner of a tender had poked itself into our carriage. Outside, a mail-van and two enormous coaches were lying very impressively on their sides, and two wounded girls were lying on the grass by the track, and people were shouting for doctors. I ultimately got away with my bag and stick and hat, and walked to the nearest station, where a porter naturally asked me for my ticket. I hired an auto and reached Paris only a quarter of an hour late for dinner. And I congratulated myself on my calmness and perfect presence of mind in a railway accident. Only "L'Ève Future" was not in my bag. I had forgotten it, and my presence of mind had thus been imperfect. I did not buy another copy of "L'Ève Future," and I don't think I ever shall, now.
"FICTION" AND "LITERATURE"
31 Aug '11
Publishers' advertisements of imaginative work are so constantly curious that one gets accustomed to their bizarre qualities and refrains from comment. But Messrs. Hutchinson, who are evidently rather proud of having secured Lucas Malet's new long novel, have thought of a new adjective, and the event must be chronicled. They are announcing to the world that Lucas Malet's new novel is "literary"—"the literary novel of the autumn." I cannot be quite sure what this means, but it is probably intended to signify that, in the opinion of Messrs. Hutchinson, Lucas Malet's novel is very special—that is to say, it is not a mere novel. Less adroit publishers than Messrs. Hutchinson might have described it as an "art novel." (Cf. "art furniture," all up Tottenham Court Road.) Some of the most esteemed provincial dailies have a column headed "Literature" on five days of the week, but on the sixth day that column is headed "New Fiction." You see the distinction. Messrs. Hutchinson are doubtless hinting to the provinces that the new book is something between "literature" and "fiction," and combines the superior attributes of both. Once the Athenæum, apparently staggered by the discovery that Joseph Conrad existed, reviewed a novel of his under the rubric of "Literature," instead of with other novels under the rubric of "Fiction." Messrs. Hutchinson have possibly an eye also on the Athenæum. Personally, I would not permit my publishers to advertise a novel of mine as literary. But on the whole I wouldn't seriously object to the adjective "unliterary."
INDEX
Academies, French and British, [81]
Academy, the British, [228]-[234]
Academy, the, under the editorship of Mr. Hind, [4], [19];
under other controls, [38], [64]
Advertisements, [300]
Agents, literary, [22], [72]
Aid, State, for the artist, [319]
Albert, Henri, [78]
Alexander, Sir George, [63]
American postal censorship, [193]
Anderson, Sir Robert, [193]
Andreief, Léonide, [224]
Anglo-Saxon, the, [243]
Anthologies, [5]
Antoine, director of the Odéon, [257], [259]
Apoutkine, [225]
Archer, William, [140]
Aristophanes, [54]
Arnold, Matthew, [19], [268]
Art, the theory of, [283], [284]
"Art of the short story," the, [86]
"Artifex" reviews the Letters of Queen Victoria, [12]
Artists, creative, [13], [158], 228
and critics, 158
as critics, [158], [283]
and money, [242], [250]-[254]
Asquith, H.H., [302]
Athenæum, the, [68], [71];
its review of "A Set of Six," [36], [332]
Audoux, Marguerite, [305]
Austin, Alfred, [325]
Author, the, [130]
Author, the, and the publisher, [13], [16], [17], [22], [33], [71], [204]
Authors and gift-books, [68]
Authors' Society, the, [130], [171], [233], [277], [291]
Autobiography in fiction, [295]
Ayscough, John, [28]
Balfour, A.J., [82], [87], [291], [306]
Balzac, [12], [134], [183], [252]
Balzac, Prof. Saintsbury's introductions to the works of, [43], [183]
Baring, Maurice, [208]
Barker, H. Granville, [317]
Barrès, Maurice, [82]
Barrie, J.M., [5], [94]
Barry, Dr. W.F., [143]
Baudelaire, Charles, [16], [221]
Bayle, Pierre, [267]
Bazin, René, [65]
Becque, Henri, [255]-[262], [323]
Beerbohm, Max, [145]
Bennett, James Gordon, [193]
Benson, Arthur Christopher, [4], [11], [239]-[241]
Berenson, Bernhard, [158]
Bernhardt, Sarah, a caricature of, [79]
Bernstein, Henri, [197]
Beverley Fathers, the, and their library, [189]
Bible, the, [172]
Binyon, Mrs. Laurence, edits "Nineteenth-Century Prose," [5]
Blackwood's Magazine, [325]
Blake, William, [18], [314]
Book in a railway accident, a, [328]
Bookman, the, [5], [143]
Book-buyer, the, [32], [71]
Book-market, the, [133]
Book-pedlar, the, [105]
Books of the Year, [77], [289]
Boot, Sir Jesse, [106], [173]
Booth, E.C., "The Cliff End," by, [26]
"Borgia!" a sensational novel, [226]
Boston Libraries Censorship, the, [190]
Bourne, George, [120]
Bournemouth, [227]
Bradley, A.C., [269]
Bridges, Robert, [22], [63], [325]
Brieux, [155], [195]-[200]
British Academy of Letters, the, [228]-[234]
British Weekly, see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Brontë, Charlotte and Emily, [42], [210]
Browning, Robert, [126]
Bunting, Sir Percy, [295]
Caine, Hall, [56], [175], [206], [305]
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, [87]
Cambridge University Press, [300]
Capus, Alfred, [197]
Carpenter, Edward, [22]
Censorship by the libraries, [167], [181], [271]
postal, in England and America, [193]
Cézanne, [282]
Chamberlain, Joseph, [137]
Charity, the sale of books for, [68]
Charmes, Francis, [81]
Chavannes, Puvis de, [190]
"Cherry Orchard, The," Tchehkoff's play, [321]-[324]
Chesterton, G.K., [150]-[152]
Christie, Manson, and Woods, [281]
Christmas, the publishers', [73]
Churchill, Winston, [291]
Circulating libraries, the, [88]
Classics, the reading of, [33]
Clear, Claudius, see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Clemenceau, [61]
Clifford, Dr. John, [196]
Coleridge, S.T., [268]
Collins, Arthur, [318]
Collins J. Churton, [41], [269]
Colonial expansion, German, [30]
Comedians, stage, [63]
Composition, the foundation of all arts, [27]
Conductor, an orchestral, [43]
Confessions, [77]
Convention, literary, [118]
Conrad, Joseph, [9], [27], [32], [36]-[40], [87], [94], [231], [238], [332]
Corelli, Marie, [32], [47], [48], [49], [56], [103], [206], [305]
Corroborative detail, [312]
Criticism, English literary, [267]
the, of artists, [158], [283]
Critics, artists and, [158]
newspaper, [26], [36]
professorial, [41], [269]
Crosland, T.W.H., [64]
Cross, Donatella, [235]
Crosse and Blackwell, Messrs.
Curel, François de, [253]
Daily Mail, the, [127], [138], [139]
Daily News, the, [150], [295]
Daily Telegraph, the, [306]
Danby, Frank, [10]
D'Annunzio, Gabriele, [235]
Dante, [19]
Darling, Mr. Justice, [12]
Davies, W.H., [78], [325]
Davray, Henry, [220]
Debussy, Claude, [280]
Defoe, Daniel, [172]
Dehan, Richard (Clotilde Graves), [290]
"De Profundis," suppressions in, [217]
Dial, the, [243]
Dialogue, novel, [311]
Dickens, Charles, [105], [134], [139], [252]
Dilettanti of letters, the, as a class, [229]
Dilke, Sir Charles, [295]
Dixie, Lady Florence, [193]
Dobson, Austin, [270]
Donnay, Maurice, [197]
Dostoievsky, F.M., [117], [208]-[213], [216], [308]
Douglas, Lord Alfred, [64], [325]
James, [303]
Drama in the novel, [311]
Dumas fils, Alexandre, [200]
"Ecce Homo," Nietzsche's, [77]
Edinburgh Review, the, on "Ugliness in Fiction," [8]
"Editions," French and English, [59]
Eliot, George, [8], [135]
Elton, Oliver, [269]
Emerson, R.W., [190]
"Encyclopædia Britannica, The," [300]
English literary criticism, [267]
English Review, the, [66], [145], [294]
Epic, the, and the Sonnet, [87]
Esher, Lord, [11]
Factory Acts, the, [327]
Fay, William, [63]
"Fiction" and "literature," [328]
Fiction, autobiography in, [295]
ugliness in, [8]
Fielding, Henry, [172], [192], [271]
Flaubert, Gustave, [16], [212]
Florio, John, [223]
Fogazzaro, Antonio, [306]
Forster, E.M., [292]
Fortnightly Review, the, [193], [306], [325]
France, Anatole, [59], [82], [232]
Free library, the Municipal, [104]
Frith, W.P., [210]
Galsworthy, John, [9], [95], [184], [214]-[216], [317]
Garvin, J.L., [291], [305]
Gauguin, [282]
Gaunt, Mary, [276]
Gautier, Theophile, [139]
George V, King, [317]
Georges, Mlle., [99]
German Colonial expansion, [30]
Gide, André, [66], [155]
Gift-Books, Royal, [68]
Gil Blas, [259]
Gilchrist, R. Murray, [87], [94], [117]
Gladstone, Lord, [157]
W.E., [51]
Glasgow libraries, censorship in the, [192]
Glyn, Elinor, [10], [271]-[277], [289]
Goethe, [19]
Gogol, [117], [208]
Gorky, Maxim, [224]
Gould, Jay, [193]
Grahame, Kenneth, [57]
Grosvenor library, the, [106]
Hand, T.W., librarian at Leeds, [189]
Hankin, St. John, [140]
Hardy, Thomas, [8], [9], [87], [94], [96], [137], [172], [192], [267]
Harland, Henry, [91]
Harper's Magazine, [51]
Harraden, Beatrice, [47]
Harriman, [193]
Havergal, Francis Ridley, [241]
Hazlitt, William, [268]
Heaton, Sir J. Henniker, [196]
Heinemann, William, [169], [170]
Herford, Prof. C.H., [84], [269]
Hewlett, Maurice, [130]
Hill, Rowland, [135]
Hind, C. Lewis, as editor of the Academy, [4]
Hocking, the brothers, [103]
Holiday reading, [222]
Holmes, O.W., [190]
Hope, Anthony, [47], [130]
Houssaye, Henry, [81]
Hudson, W.H., [278]
Hugo, Victor, [134], [155]
Hull and the libraries Censorship, [185]
Hull Daily Mail, the, [186], [187]
Hutchinson, Sir G.T., [130], [169]
Thomas, Wordsworthian researches of, [18]
Ibsen, Henrik, [321], [323]
l'Illustration, [260]
Impressionistic Method, the, [37]
Ingram, J.H., [84]
Intimations of Immortality, [63]
Irwin, Mabel McCoy, [194]
Jacobs, W.W., and Aristophanes, [53], [94]
James, Henry, [87], [95], [263]-[266]
Jaurès, Jean, [61]
John o' London, see Whitten, Wilfred
Johnson, Lionel, [267]
Journal, a report in the Paris, [223]
des Débats, the, [81]
Journalism, success in, [300]-[304]
Keary, Peter, [188]
Keats, John, [237]
Kingsley, Charles, [105]
Kipling, Rudyard, [55], [57], [94], [160]-[166]
Knight, Prof. W., Wordsworthian researches of, [18]
Labourer, the Surrey, [120]
Lamb, Charles, [268]
Lambert, Canon, [186]
Lane, John, [120]
Lang, Andrew, [51], [83], [114]
Lansdowne, Lord, [306]
Laprade, Pierre, [283]
Lectures and State Performances, [315]
Leasing, [159]
Letters, the, of Queen Victoria, [11], [16], [68], [69]
Libraries, [106]
the circulating, [88]
and their subscribers, [33]
the, and "His Hour," [271]
censorship by the, [167], [181], [271]
Library, the Municipal Free, [104]
Literary criticism, English, [267]
Literary periodical, the, [242]
Liverpool, [44]
London, [160];
and the Neo-Impressionists, [280]
a book on, [3]
the potential reading public of, [101]
the Bishop of, [77]
Longfellow, H.W., [190]
Love poetry, [145]
Lowell, J.R., [190]
Lucas, E.V., [6], [150]
Lucifer, an American journal, [193]
Lytton, Lord (and "Money"), [316]-[319]
Mackail, J.W., [270]
Macmillan, Sir Frederick, [130]
"Madame Bovary," terms of the publication of, [16]
Madeleine, Jules de la, [16]
Malet, Lucas, [331]
Mallarmé, Stéphane, [65]
"Man of Kent, A," see Nicoll, Sir W.R.
Manchester, the potential reading public of, [101]
Manchester Guardian, the, [47], [84], [237]
Marjoram, J., [145]
Masefield, John, [28], [311]-[314]
Mason, Frederic, [77]
Mathews, Elkin, [267]
Matisse, [283]
Maupassant, Guy de, [86], [117], [137], [252]
Maxwell, W.B., [9], [27]
Meyerfeld, Dr. Max, [217]
Memoirs, books of scandalous, [98], [181]
"Mercure de France, Société du," [59]
Meredith, George, [87], [95], [134]-[139], [173], [227]
Merrick, Leonard, [5], [94]
Methuen, Sir A.M.S., [130]
Middle-class, [89]
Milton, [19], [20]
Mitchell library, Whitman's poems at the, [192]
Molière, [19]
Money, artists and, [242], [250]-[254]
"Money," a gala performance of, [316]
Montague, C.E., [201]-[203]
Montaigne, [222]
Montenegro, the Queen of, [276]
Moore, George, [8], [87], [94], [172], [176], [190]
Morley, Lord, [22]
Morning Post, the, [208]
Mudie's, [33], [52], [88], [173], [174], [175]
Municipal Free library, the, [104]
Murray, John, action against the Times, [11], [16]
Napoleon's mistresses, [99]
Nation, the, [84]
Nelson's Sevenpenny novels, [107], [130]
Neo-Impressionism and literature, [281]
Neolith, the, [243]
New Age, the, [122], [246]
"New Machiavelli, The," [294]-[299]
New York, [160], [161]
Newcastle-on-Tyne, [3]
Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, [5], [26], [29], [67], [114], [222], [319]
Nietzsche, Friedrich, [78]
Norris, W.E., [49]
Novel, a "literary," [331]
a sexual, [271]
dialogue and drama in the, [311]
library censorship of the, [167], [181], [271]
the sevenpenny, [72], [107], [130]
the six-shilling, [22], [72], [131]
the, ugliness in, [8]
of the season, the, [26]
Novels and short stories, a perennial discussion, [86]
autobiography in, [295]
shilling, [107]
the length of, [248]
the sales of, [68], [131]
Novelists and agents, [22], [72]
Nousanne, Henri de, [259], [260]
Noyes, Alfred, [325]
Numès, M., [259]
Omar Khayyám, [84]
Ospovat, Henry, [79]
Pall Mall Gazette, the, [137]
Paris, [155], [256]
Pater, Walter, [227]
Pedlars, book-, [105]
Pemberton, Max, [103]
Periodical, the literary [242]
Persky, Serge, [224]
Perusals, unfinished, [235]-[237]
Phillpotts, Eden, [47], [87]
Pinero, Sir A.W., [140]
Play of Tchehkoff's, a, [321]-[324]
Poe and the short story, [84]
Poetry, love, [145]
marine, [325]
official recognition of, [155]
Poets, contemporary, [63], [325]
Post-Impressionists, see Neo-Impressionism
Postal censorship, English and American, [193]
Prices of books, the, [14], [130]
Prose, the, of Wilfred Whitten, [3]
Professors, [41], [269]
Provinces, the potential reading public of the, [101]
Public, the, [88]
a publisher on "the public," [204]
disdain of artists for the public, [243]
the characteristics of the middle-class public, "the backbone," [88]-[94]
treatment of this class by contemporary novelists, [94]-[96]
unreadiness of this class to be pleased, [97]
explanation of its concern with fiction, [98]
the potential public in the industrial Midlands, [101]
trade failure to cater for this public, [102]-[104]
the Free Libraries, [104]
the book-pedlar, [105]
cheap editions, [107]
the sections composed of dilettanti, [229]
"right people," [291], [294]
as book-buyers, [32]
Publishers' Association, the, and Library Censorship, [169], [277]
Publishers and authors, [204]-[207]
English and French, compared, [17]
their place in literature, [13]
profits, [11], [16], [72], [182]
Publishing seasons, bad, [22], [26], [68]
Punch, [143]
Putney, the High Street, [123]
Quiller-Couch, Sir A.T., [55], [87]
Railway accident, a book in a, [328]
Raleigh, Prof. Sir Walter, [44], [238], [269]
Reading on holiday, [222]
Realism, the progress towards, [118];
Russian realism, [208]
Rembrandt, [281]
Reprints, cheap, [33]
Reviewers, [26], [36]
Revue des Deux Mondes, the, [81]
Reynolds, Stephen, [78], [120]
Richards, Grant, [26]
Richardson, Frank, [109]
Samuel, [139], [172], [192]
"Rita," [51]
Robaglia, M., [259]
Rockefeller, J.D., [193]
Rodin's statue of Hugo, [156]
Rosebery, Lord, [250]
Ross, Robert, [217]
Rossetti, D.G., [172]
Roussel, [283]
Rouveyre's caricature of Bernhardt, [79]
Royal Academy, the, [234].
Russian fiction and drama, [117], [141], [208]-[213], [224], [321]
Rutherford, Mark, [94]
Sainte-Beuve, [267], [268], [270]
Saintsbury, George, [42], [269]
Sales, the, of novels, [59], [68], [131]
Sampson, John, his edition of Blake, [18]
Sargent, John, [95], [190]
Savoy, the, [243]
Scarborough, [227]
Schücking, Dr. Levin, [66]
Scott, Sir Walter, [86], [105], [134], [139], [252]
Scott-James, R.A., [295]
Sculpture, proposal for an academy of, [234]
Sea and Slaughter, [325]-[327]
Season, the novel of the, [26]
Seasons, bad publishing, [22], [68]
Sélincourt, Ernest de, his edition of Keats, [18]
Series of reprints, cheap, [33]
Sevenpenny novel, the, [72], [107], [130]
Shakespeare, [19], [172], [318]
Shaw, George Bernard, [84], [130], [195], [200], [291], [316], [317]
Shelley, P.B., [172], [318]
Shilling novels, [107]
Short story, the, in England, [38], [84]
Shorter, C.K., [26], [29], [42], [114], [188]
Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., [105]
Sims, G.R., [126]
Single lines, the, of Wordsworth, [18]
Six-shilling novel, the, [22], [72], [131]
Smith, Sir F.E., [78], [291]
Nowell, his edition of Wordsworth, [18], [21]
Smith, Reginald, [130]
the Rt. Hon. W.F.D., [47]
and Son, W.H., [88], [132]
Smollett, Tobias, [192]
"Société du Mercure de France," the, [59]
Sonnet, the, and the Epic, [87]
Sphere, see Shorter, C.K.
Stacpoole, H. de Vere, [28]
Stage Society, the Incorporated, [256], [321]
State performances, lectures and, [315]
Stationers' shops and books, [103]
Stead, W.T., [295]
Stendhal, [60], [96], [134], [211]
Stephen, Sir Leslie, [19]
Sterne, Laurence, [172]
Stevenson, R.L., [37], [81], [86], [221], [252]
Stock, M., the French publisher, [256], [260]
Strand Magazine, the, [113]
Strauss, Richard, [280]
Style, English, [45]
Success in Journalism, [300]-[304]
Suppressions in "De Profundis," [217]
Surrey labourer, the, [120]
Swift, Jonathan, [172]
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, [22], [66], [123]
Switzerland, [227]
Symons, Arthur, [209]
Synge, J.M., [63]
Taine, [267], [270]
Tchehkoff, Anton, [117], [141], [208], [225], [258], [321]-[324]
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, [84], [85], [103], [125], [126], [156]
Thackeray, W.M., [134], [139], [315]
Thurston, E. Temple, [290]
Times, the, and the letters of Queen Victoria, [11]
an article on Trollope in, [148]
Book Club, [88], [315]
Literary Supplement, [48], [266]
Tolstoy, [117], [192], [208], [224]
Tonnelat, M., on German colonial expansion, [30]
Tourgeniev, [117], [208]-[213]
Tree, Sir H. Beerbohm, [197]
Trevena, John, [276]
Trollope, Anthony, [134], [139], [148]
Tunbridge Wells, [12]
Ugliness in fiction, [8]
Unclean books, [143]
Unfinished perusals, [235]
"Unpleasant" books, [97]
Vachell, Horace Annesley, [97]
Vallotton, Félix, [283]
Verlaine, Paul, [28]
Victoria, Queen, the Betters of, [11], [16], [68], [69]
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, [129], [328]
Vladimir, the Grand Duchess, [276]
Walkley, A.B., [62], [140], [194], [222]
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, [39], [47], [56], [65], [103], [130], [139], [206], [291]
Wedgwood, A.F., [237]
Wells, H.G., [61], [62], [78], [87], [94], [109]-[116], [123], [186], [192], [294]-[299], [313], [315]
Westminster Gazette, the, [60], [69], [248]
White, Gilbert, [84]
W. Hale (Mark Rutherford), [94]
Whitman's poems at the Mitchell Library, [102]
Whitten, Wilfred (John o' London), [3]
Wilde, Oscar, [66], [217], [317]
Williams, Daniel, a bookseller, [12]
Woman's Journal, the Boston, [193]
Wordsworth, William, [18], [157]
Wyman, Messrs., [132]
Yeats, W.B., [63], [325]
Yellow Book, the, [243]
Yonge, Charlotte M., [8], [105], [136], [210]
Zangwill, Israel, [311]
Zola, Emile, [59], [208]