How ashamed one feels, even if quite alone, while reading a really foolish book! and the feeling of shame is a right and healthy one.
Perhaps the type of story which does most harm to girls of the middle and lower classes, is that in which a titled lover of fabulous wealth appears suddenly like a “god out of a machine” to wed the heroine, who is remarkable only for her beauty. He has a great deal to answer for, that young aristocrat, whom we have not met outside the pages of such literature.
No girl would deliberately reflect: “I am going to read such and such a novel to improve my mind.” If she did, she would show she had not much mind to improve. But she may bear in mind one or two general principles and suggestions.
It is very desirable to read the best historical novels. For example, The Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton, and Hypatia, by Charles Kingsley, will help you to realise the early centuries of the Christian era. Hereward the Wake, by Kingsley, and The Last of the Barons, by Bulwer Lytton, may be read in connection with Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest. The Cloister and the Hearth, a magnificent historical novel by Charles Reade, throws light upon the fifteenth century, and Romola, by George Eliot, does the same so far as Italy is concerned. Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley, is a stirring tale of the sixteenth century. John Inglesant, by Shorthouse, will do more to explain the Stuart period than any number of dry “Outlines,” while Thackeray’s Esmond and The Virginians may follow on. The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, will help you to realise the terror of the French Revolution, and The Shadow of the Sword, by Robert Buchanan, gives a forcible picture of the days of Napoleon.
There are many other good historical novels; but, as Scott is always regarded as facile princeps in such work, it may be useful to arrange his novels in chronological order.
Before the end of the fourteenth century come Ivanhoe, Count Robert of Paris, The Betrothed, The Talisman, and The Fair Maid of Perth. After 1400—Quentin Durward, and Anne of Geierstein: 1500, Kenilworth, The Abbot, The Monastery, Marmion (poem): 1600, Fortunes of Nigel, Legend of Montrose, Woodstock, Old Mortality, The Bride of Lammermoor, Peveril of the Peak: 1700, The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, Waverley, Rob Roy, and Heart of Midlothian.
That history should be made real is a matter of no small importance. After all, it is the story of men and women like ourselves, and Professor Seeley’s remark in The Expansion of England (a valuable book) is worth remembering—
“When I meet a person who does not find history interesting, it does not occur to me to alter history—I try to alter him!”
There has, during the last few years, been a decided increase in the writing of romances and tales of adventure, pure and simple, removed from everyday experience, and one need only suggest the names of Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Hope, Max Pemberton, to illustrate the class of story which much delights the author, and probably also her young friends.
For the general run of fiction, here are a few names: Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Kingsley and his brother, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell, R. D. Blackmore (be sure you read Lorna Doone), George Macdonald, Sir Walter Besant, Mrs. Oliphant, Charlotte Brontë—that wonderful, fiery, lonely genius—you will read her Shirley and Villette, whether we advise you to do so or not. And, indeed, the list of writers of good fiction is so enormous that it is absurd to attempt to give it. As soon as a few names are written down, others press for mention. Therefore, we will renounce the task; first, perhaps, reminding you not to omit Mrs. Oliphant’s Little Pilgrim in the Unseen. All the stories of this writer which have a tinge of the atmosphere of the spiritual borderland, are deeply suggestive.