CHAPTER IV_A child's guide to reading

THE READING OF FICTION--(_Continued_)

In discussing the question of plots we could not keep out the question

of character, which we agreed for the purposes of our discussion is

the second element of fiction. In importance it is the first--the

indispensable element. What is fiction for except to tell us about

human beings? I cannot believe what somebody said, that the three

essentials of stories are first plot, second plot and third plot. In

the first place, that sounds too clever to be true and in the second

place--it is not true. The plot is the means of keeping persons in

action so that we can get to know them. In this “naturalists” and

“realists” find a good argument, for they put their emphasis on human

character. They say: “Here we exhibit you and your friends and your

enemies. Plot? We are telling a story. Stories are all about you. But

we have not forced events out of probable order or distorted the facts

of life beyond recognition for the sake of an exciting situation. We

draw our fellow men, so that you recognize them as they are. Even as

they are in their homes and shops and churches, so they are in these

pages, talking, loving, hating, bargaining, intriguing, dying. We

select the significant, we heighten the values of life; but we portray

life essentially as it is.” True enough. The realist gives us “folks.”

But he has no monopoly of human beings. We are quite as well acquainted

with Alice who wandered in Wonderland and went through the Looking

Glass as we are with Mr. David Copperfield and Miss Maggie Tulliver.

Peter Pan (in Mr. J. M. Barrie’s play), who flew in the face of nature

and refused to grow up, is so true a person that all the children

recognized him at once and old men chuckled and remembered him.

The English novel is varied and abundant, and its characters,

collectively, form a populous democracy. Everybody is in it somewhere

from peasant to king, and if some of us and our friends have been left

out, new novelists are at hand watching every kind and grade of life

and preparing to fix it in a living page. The American novel is not yet

old and broad enough to have captured all our types of men and women

and recreated them in fiction. But a good beginning has been made. The

varied voices of the American country town are heard from all corners

of the land, but so far most of them have been voices of short compass,

incapable of sustained utterance. We still depend for studies of

American character on sketches and short stories, and these in the mass

are an important body of literature. New England, Virginia, California,

the Middle West, the great cities, have had their short-story writers.

The novelists are still on the way. Our national life is so scattered

and changing that the novelist has difficulty in keeping a group of

Americans together long enough to plot them into a large book. In

Europe where a small town contains every kind of society the novelist

finds the compact social stage all set and characters in abundance.

Anthony Trollope, with little care to plot, sets society to turning in

the quiet eddy of a small cathedral town and presently we are looking

into the heart of England. He introduces the same people into novel

after novel and we are always glad to see them again. The success of

his many novels supports the contention that characters are the staff

of fiction. A defect of plot is easier to pardon than a defect in

character drawing.

Untruth to human nature, violence either to its waking experiences or

its dreams, destroys a book, destroys the living world it represents

and leaves us holding a thing of ink and paper. The other day I was

reading a novel which has multiplied itself over the land by force

of printing presses and sensational advertising. It is a story about

modern people of an undistinguished but potentially interesting kind;

the heroine is, if I remember right, a confidential secretary to a

business man. The author makes her say something like this to her lover:

“Ere I knew you, there had come into my life but few pleasures and

diversions; I had been like a bird shut up in a cage; and you set me

free. Yet it was not that alone which attracted me to you. Grateful as

I was, I was charmed, too, by your conversation which was so totally

different than (_sic_) anything I had known heretofore. You saved me

from the wretched monotony of commonplace existence and took me into a

new world, and my gratitude for that blossomed into love”; and so on.

The only thing in that which sounds like human speech is the blunder

in the use of “than,” which I suspect is an unintentional blunder on

the part of the author. The speech is no more appropriate to the given

character in the given place than a sentence out of Macaulay’s essays.

The most ingenious plotting could not entice a discriminating reader

beyond that dead line of empty words, for they are proof enough that

the author himself does not know his heroine’s character. To be sure,

dialogue in novels cannot be “natural as life,” for actual conversation

taken down word for word is diffuse and hard to read. The conversations

in books must sound natural, appropriate to the place, the time, and

the character of the person whom the reader is expected to believe

in. There cannot be any rules for making conversation; if there are

any rules they are for the novelists to study, not for the reader.

The reader only knows whether the speeches sound right or whether the

author is cheating him by passing off as talk mere words which the

author strung out on paper and did not hear with his inner sense from

the lips of his character.

In the same book there is a description which I will quote, if I can

resist the temptation to parody it:

“The house nestled amid the verdurous shade of immense trees; to

the left of the wooded park were sloping lawns dotted here and there

with beds of the most exquisite flowers, which in contrast to the old

weatherbeaten house greatly enhanced the beauty of the scene. Inside

the house the utmost good taste prevailed from the antique colonial

hatrack in the front hall to the handsome, but simple furniture of the

parlor, in one corner of which on a sofa that was a cherished heirloom,

a young girl might have been seen sitting engaged in embroidering a

fine piece of linen. She was beautiful with large dark eyes and a

luxuriant mass of richest brown hair,” and so on.

Except for the poor fun of making sport of the author no one with a

sense of humor will read beyond that. The author himself cannot see

the place he would present to his reader’s eye. Description, which we

have chosen to regard as the third element of fiction, must aid the

imagination to realize the events and the people or it is worse than

ineffectual. The novelist whose story is “dotted here and there” with

descriptions which really “enhance the beauty” of his story is to be

numbered among the immortals.

The masters of description touch in details of sound and vision as they

progress with the narrative, and the reader hears and sees without

being aware that he has read description. The more leisurely novelists,

who are great enough to carry a story through three volumes, do often

stop and paint a picture, and even the great ones frequently fail to

get the pictorial effect they seek. Scott’s descriptions sometimes

interfere with his story and descend into a catalogue of details.

But the total effect of his description is to make the entire world

familiar with Scotland, streets, houses, mountains, and moors. It is

part of Scott’s patriotic purpose to preserve in a series of novels the

legend, the history, the character, the ideals, the social customs of

old and new Scotland; and he allows himself, as a kind of antiquarian,

all the space he needs for minute description. So his descriptions

serve a purpose, even when they lack imaginative vision. Moreover, the

great river of his stories is broad and swift enough to carry an amount

of dead wood which would choke narratives of lesser volume and power.

A great example of a long descriptive passage in fiction is in the

fifty-fifth chapter of “David Copperfield.” There is to be action

enough presently to sweep the reader off his feet; in preparation for

it Dickens gives three or four pages of description of the storm. The

excellence of that description grows upon the reader who finds how

seldom even the better novelists succeed in painting on large canvases.

Few artists in prose have been adequate to the greatness of the sea.

Stevenson has succeeded in giving both the seas on the Scotch coast and

the Pacific with its mysterious islands. Of living writers in English

the masters of “sea pieces” are Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. Joseph

Conrad. But none of the younger writers, even of those especially

devoted to the sea, has excelled Dickens, landsman and London cockney

as he was, in that great picture of the storm.

I once knew some young ladies who were enamored of the books of that

third-rate novelist, Miss Marie Corelli. To be fair, I never read

but two of her novels, and though they are so false that I doubt her

ability to write anything beautiful and true, she may have written

masterpieces that I have unfortunately missed. The young ladies had

named their club after one of Miss Corelli’s books. I asked one

worshipper what she liked in her favorite novelist. The reply was

startling: “I love the beautiful descriptions.” It was interesting

to find a young lady who liked beautiful descriptions for their own

sake--most of us are not so far advanced in our critical enjoyment of

fiction--and it was interesting to learn that Miss Corelli had written

beautiful descriptions. But when I ungraciously pressed the matter, my

friend confessed that she could not find any descriptive passage that

seemed especially worth exhibiting.

The secret of this case, if we are ungallant enough to subject to

inquisition so tender a thing as a young lady’s conscience and

literary tastes, is that she had learned from some muddied source

that a beautiful description is a precious thing in a novel. She was

afraid that the things in the book which really interested her might

not be admirable--though I dare say they are harmless enough--and so

she presented that little white excuse for reading the novel. Just

so ladies who are not young have been known to admire a fiction of

doubtful character wholly for its “exquisite style,” when if they

really appreciated “exquisite style,” they would be reading something

else.

There is an enjoyment of style that seems either apart from the

other kinds of enjoyment in reading or is a refinement, an addition,

which makes the other kinds keener. In choosing novels, however,

we do not need, as a practical matter, to hunt for style, any more

than we need to hunt for descriptions, for the writer who is great

enough to contrive plots and draw characters must have learned how

to write well. The good novels are all in good style. The fiction

maker whose style is poor is almost certain to fail in other ways

and be altogether unacceptable. It is true that among the great ones

some have more distinction of manner than others. Thackeray never

writes so clumsily as Dickens at his worst. Stevenson’s phrasing is

invariably excellent, whereas a greater novelist, Walter Scott, often

for pages at a time throws off his sentences so hastily that they are

not easy, not pleasant, to read. Jane Austen in her style is near to

perfection; George Eliot, a writer of much more power, whose heights

of eloquence are not equaled by any other woman, seems sometimes to be

either expressing a kind of thought, or expressing it in a vocabulary

and with a complexity of construction, which would be tolerable in a

philosophic essay but is not suited to fictitious narrative. It is well

to begin to be aware of the degrees of style and their general effect,

to enjoy beauty and eloquence and grace in some measure for their own

sake. But the inexperienced reader is safe to choose his novels for

their substance; the style will usually be adequate and the merits of

the style will enter the reader’s consciousness gradually and without

effort of appreciation on his part.

In choosing novels the ordinary reader need not at first

concern himself with the history of a novelist or his technical

characteristics, or with the place which critics have given to him in

their schemes of literary development. A simple method of selection is

to find on somebody’s advice a novel that has interested many readers,

and then if it prove good, to try another by the same author. If a

writer has produced two novels that interest you, it is safe to assume

that he has written a third and a fourth. Some writers, it is true,

have been distinguished for a single masterpiece. “Don Quixote” is

the only book of Cervantes’ that we are likely to care for. “Robinson

Crusoe” is all that most people have found good in Defoe’s tales

(though there is much merit in his other stories). No other book of

Mrs. Stowe’s is even second to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” “The Vicar of

Wakefield” is the glorious whole of Goldsmith’s narrative prose,

though he succeeded in every other form of literature, including the

prose drama. But the man who can write two novels can write three if

he has time; the two-novel power is likely to be a ten-novel power

with torpedo fleets of short stories and essays. Anyone who has liked

“Silas Marner” and “Middlemarch” will not need to be urged to read

“Felix Holt,” “Adam Bede,” “Romola,” “The Mill on the Floss.” The

person who has once read and enjoyed two novels of Dickens is likely

to read six or eight. “Pendennis” leads to “The Newcomes.” And any

of Trollope’s “Barchester,” novels is an introduction to the happily

interminable series.

[Illustration: HAWTHORNE]

I have purposely said little about the short story, because in this day

of magazines we all read short stories, some of them pretty good ones.

There are fifty persons who can write one or two acceptable short tales

to one who can make a novel of moderate merit. And the great writers of

the tale have often been novelists as well, so that if one begins to

read novels one will meet with the best short stories which have been

worth collecting into volumes. Readers of “The House of Seven Gables”

and “The Scarlet Letter” will make the acquaintance of Hawthorne’s

“Twice Told Tales” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” Among modern

fictionists of importance Poe stands almost alone as a writer of tales

who never tried the longer and greater form of the novel, though there

are several excellent authors, such as Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Miss Sarah

Orne Jewett, Mrs. Mary Wilkins-Freeman, whose short tales outweigh in

value, if not in quantity, their more extended narratives.

In our discussion of fiction we have dwelt entirely on books for

adults and neglected what is known as juvenile fiction. Here again the

omission was intended. Juvenile fiction is certain to make its way

in more than ample supply into American homes, and I doubt whether

fiction that is wholly good for adults is not the best for boys

and girls of, say, thirteen. When our fathers and mothers, or our

grandfathers and grandmothers, were young, they read the newest book

by Dickens, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, and were no worse for having

fewer “juveniles” than modern publishers purvey for the benefit of

the growing generation. I should think that Henty’s books, which have

merits, but were turned out on a steam lathe, would suggest that

Scott’s historical romances are better, and that the Pattys and Pollys

and Lucys and Brendas, whose adventures are chronicled in many an

entertaining series would speedily make way for heroines like Maggie

Tulliver and heroes like Master Tom Brown, whose youth is perennial.

When “juveniles” are really good, parents read them after children have

gone to bed. I do not know whether “Tom Brown at Rugby” is catalogued

by the careful librarians as a book for boys, but I am sure it is a

book for men. I dare say that a good many pairs of eyes that have

passed over the pages of Mr. John T. Trowbridge and Elijah Kellogg and

Louisa Alcott have been old enough to wear spectacles. And if Mrs. Kate

Douglas Wiggin ever thought that in “Timothy’s Quest” and “Rebecca” she

was writing books especially for the young, adult readers have long

since claimed her for their own. I have enjoyed Mr. A. S. Pier’s tales

of the boys at “St. Timothy’s,” though he planned them for younger

readers. We are told on good authority that _St. Nicholas_ and _The

Youth’s Companion_ appear in households where there are no children,

and they give a considerable portion of their space to serial stories

written for young people. Between good “juveniles” and good books for

grown persons there is not much essential difference.

Anyone who is old enough to make out the words can safely enter

the large world of the English and American novel. The chances of

encountering the few that are unfit for the young are slight. Ruskin in

his essay “Of Queens’ Gardens,” which treats of the education of girls,

says: “Whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should be

chosen, not for what is _out_ of them but for what is _in_ them. The

chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide itself

in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl; but the

emptiness of an author oppresses her, and his amiable folly degrades

her.” A novel in our language that has been read and freely talked of

for many years is as safe as a church; and there are enough such novels

to keep one happily occupied during all the hours one can give to

reading fiction to the end of one’s days.

LIST OF FICTION

_Supplementary to Chapter IV_

The following list of novels, tales, and prose dramas is offered to the

young reader by way of suggestion and not as a “prescribed” list. Like

the other lists in this book it omits many masterpieces that will occur

immediately to the mind of the older reader, and it includes some

books that are not masterpieces. The notes, or “evaluations” as the

librarians call them, are arbitrary, indicating the private opinions

of the present Guide; they are sometimes extensive in the case of less

important writers and are omitted in the cases of the great masters.

The way to use the list is to run over it from time to time until you

form a bowing acquaintance with the names of a few authors and some of

their books. One title or another is likely to attract you or excite

your curiosity. If you follow the impulse of that aroused curiosity and

go get the book, the list will have served its purpose.

EDMOND FRANÇOIS VALENTIN ABOUT (1828-85). _Le Roi des Montagnes._

Easy to read in French, and to be found translated into English.

ÆSOP. _Fables._

Found in many editions, some especially selected and illustrated for

children.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-88). _An Old-Fashioned Girl._ _Little Women._

_Little Men._ _Work._ _Jack and Jill._ _Jo’s Boys._

Miss Alcott has always been a favorite of young people. Her faithful

and wholesome stories of life in a New England country town entitle

her to place in the delightful company of Rose Terry Cooke, Sarah Orne

Jewett, Mrs. Mary Wilkins-Freeman, and Miss Alice Brown.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1836-1907). _The Story of a Bad Boy._ _Marjorie

Daw._

A delicate romancer with subtle humor and a turn for paradoxical

ingenious fooling which is characteristic in one form or another of

American writers as unlike as Frank R. Stockton, Edward Everett Hale,

and Mark Twain.

JAMES LANE ALLEN. _Flute and Violin._ _The Blue Grass Region._ _A

Kentucky Cardinal._ _Aftermath._

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805-75). _Fairy Tales._

To be found in _Everyman’s Library_. This collection of books,

published at fifty cents the volume by E. P. Dutton & Co., is perhaps

the best ever grouped in an inexpensive edition. It will be frequently

referred to in this and succeeding lists. Most of the books in it are

worth reading and no doubt worth buying, and this is true of most

“Universal Libraries,” “Libraries of the World’s Best Literature,”

“Five-Foot Book Shelves,” etc. But for variety’s sake one would wish

not to have all the books on one’s shelves in the same style of type

and binding. And in general it is better to buy the book one wants,

distinguished by its title and author, than to take as a whole any

editor’s or publisher’s collection of “classics.”

RASMUS BJÖRN ANDERSON. _Norse Mythology._

The simplest form in which to read the stories of the Eddas and

Scandinavian myths. It is at once a lore book for students and a

wonder book for young and old.

_Arabian Nights._ In a volume of _Everyman’s Library_. Another good

edition is that prepared by Andrew Lang.

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817). _Sense and Sensibility._ _Pride and

Prejudice._ _Mansfield Park._ _Emma._ _Northanger Abbey._ _Persuasion._

In _Everyman’s Library_.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC (1799-1850). _Atheist’s Mass._ _The Chouans._ _Christ

in Flanders._ _Eugénie Grandet._ _Old Goriot._ _The Quest of the

Absolute._ _Wild Ass’s Skin._

These are the works of Balzac found in translation in _Everyman’s

Library_. All the novels of Balzac have been translated into English.

Balzac is not the easiest of French novelists to read in the original,

though not very difficult. The young American who will take the

trouble, and give himself the pleasure, of reading a score of French

novels will find himself with a good reading knowledge of the language,

and school and college examinations in French will lose their terror.

JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE. _Auld Licht Idylls._ _A Window in Thrums._ _The

Little Minister._ _Sentimental Tommy._ _Tommy and Grizel._

Mr. Barrie has the most tender and whimsical imagination of living

writers in English. His later work has been largely for the stage.

RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE (1825-1900). _Lorna Doone._

GEORGE HENRY BORROW (1803-81). _Lavengro._ _Romany Rye._

In _Everyman’s Library_.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1816-55). _Jane Eyre._

EMILY BRONTË (1818-48). _Wuthering Heights._

ALICE BROWN. _King’s End._ _Meadow Grass._ _Tiverton Tales._

JOHN BROWN (1810-82). _Rab and His Friends._

In _Everyman’s Library_.

THOMAS BULFINCH. _The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur._

_The Age of Fable, or Beauties of Mythology._ _Legends of Charlemagne,

or Romance of the Middle Ages._

The prose storehouse of Arthurian legend in English is Thomas Mallory’s

“Morte d’Arthur,” which is in two volumes in _Everyman’s Library_.

But Mallory is not easy reading. The finest versions are those by the

poets, Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” Matthew Arnold’s “Tristram and

Iseult,” Swinburne’s “Tale of Balen.” Modern prose versions suited

to young readers are Howard Pyle’s “Story of King Arthur and his

Knights,” Sidney Lanier’s “Boy’s King Arthur” and Andrew Lang’s “Book

of Romance.” Legends allied to the Arthurian stories are found in

Lady Guest’s “Mabinogian,” which appears in one volume in _Everyman’s

Library_. See also “The Boy’s Mabinogian,” by Sidney Lanier.

The stories of Charlemagne are found in a volume suited for young

readers edited by Alfred John Church.

Classic mythology in its highest form is, of course, to be found in the

Greek and Roman poets, and it permeates English poetry. Prose versions

of Greek and Roman tales suited to young readers are to be found in

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wonder Book” and “Tanglewood Tales,” Charles

Kingsley’s “The Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children,” and

“Stories from the Greek Tragedians,” by Alfred John Church. See also “A

Child’s Guide to Mythology,” by Helen A. Clarke.

HENRY CUYLUR BUNNER (1855-96). _Short Sixes._

Among the best American short stories.

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-88). _The Pilgrim’s Progress._

In _Everyman’s Library_ and many other cheap editions.

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. _Little Lord Fauntleroy._ _Editha’s Burglar._

_Sara Crewe._

FRANCES BURNEY (Madame d’Arblay, 1752-1840). _Evelina._

GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE. _Old Creole Days._ _The Grandissimes._

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616). _Don Quixote._

[Illustration: COOPER]

In Motteux’s translation in two volumes of _Everyman’s Library_, and

other popular editions.

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS (“Mark Twain”). _Tom Sawyer._ _The Prince

and the Pauper._ _Huckleberry Finn._ _A Connecticut Yankee in King

Arthur’s Court._ _Pudd’nhead Wilson._ _Personal Recollections of Joan

of Arc._ _The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg._

WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS (1824-89). _The Woman in White._ _The

Moonstone._

JOSEPH CONRAD. _Youth._ _Falk._ _The Children of the Sea._ _Typhoon._

One of the most remarkable of recent writers, a Pole who adopted the

English language and has contributed to its beauties. Unsurpassed as a

writer of stories of the sea.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851). _The Spy._ _The Pilot._ _The Last

of the Mohicans._ _The Prairie._ _The Pathfinder._ _The Deerslayer._

_The Red Rover._

The young reader had better plunge into Cooper before he ceases to be

a young reader; not that the adult reader cannot enjoy these virile

narratives, which have been read all over the world for nearly a

century, they will always remain important records of early American

life; but better fiction soon displaces them, growth in literary taste

makes evident the defects which Mark Twain sets forth in his witty

essay on Cooper; and to have grown beyond Cooper without having met

and enjoyed him means a genuine loss.

DINAH MARIA CRAIK (Mrs. Mulock, 1826-87). _John Halifax, Gentleman._

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD (1854-1909). _Mr. Isaacs._ _Dr. Claudius._

_Saracinesca._ _Sant’ Ilario._ _A Cigarette Maker’s Romance._

Crawford had a vein of real genius which is obscured by the great

number of his less meritorious books.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (1824-92). _Prue and I._

This pleasant, fine-hearted humorist should not be neglected by the

rising generation of Americans.

GEORGE CUPPLES (1822-91). _The Green Hand._

RICHARD HENRY DANA (1815-82). _Two Years Before the Mast._

It is a happy accident that Dana’s name follows that of Cupples. Fifty

years ago in “The Green Hand” and “Two Years Before the Mast” England

and America held command of the sea in fiction. This is an appropriate

place to mention three books by the American writer, Herman Melville

(1819-91), “Omoo,” “Typee” and “Moby Dick,” which are big enough to

sail in the fleet with Cupples and Dana. Sea craft are growing larger

every year but not sea books, though Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Rudyard

Kipling, Mr. Frank Bullen and Mr. Clark Russell are taking us on good

voyages under sail and steam.

ALPHONSE DAUDET (1840-97). _Le Petit Chose._ _Jack._ _Tartarin of

Tarascon._ _Contes Choisis._

Among the easiest of French writers to read in the original. Several of

his books have been published in English.

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. _Gallegher._ _Van Bibber and Others._

Fresh and charming short stories by a writer who has not fulfilled the

promise of his youth.

EDMONDO DE AMICIS. _Heart; A School Boy’s Journal._

A fine story of schoolboy life, to be found in English translation.

DANIEL DEFOE (166?-1731). _Robinson Crusoe._

WILLIAM DE MORGAN. _Joseph Vance._ _Alice-for-Short._ _Somehow Good._

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-70).

No list of titles is necessary under the name of Dickens. There are

innumerable editions of his works.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI (Lord Beaconsfield, 1804-81). VIVIAN GREY.

CONINGSBY. LOTHAIR. SYBIL.

CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON (“Lewis Carroll”). _Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland._ _Through the Looking Glass._ _Silvie and Bruno._

And we could not be happy without “The Hunting of the Snark” and other

verses in Lewis Carroll’s “Rhyme and Reason.”

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. _Adventures of Sherlock Holmes._ _Memoirs of

Sherlock Holmes._ _Micah Clark._ _The White Company._

The fame of the Sherlock Holmes stories has thrown somewhat into the

background the best of Sir Conan Doyle’s work, the two historical

romances.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, Père (1803-70).

No list of titles is necessary under Dumas’s name. For though he and

his “syndicate” of assistants produced a great number of mediocre

works, those most frequently met in English are good, “The Three

Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “The Queen’s Necklace” and

“Twenty Years After.”

GEORGE DU MAURIER (1831-96). _Peter Ibbetson._ _Trilby._

EDWARD EGGLESTON. _The Hoosier Schoolmaster._ _The Hoosier Schoolboy._

GEORGE ELIOT (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-80).

No titles are necessary under George Eliot’s name. Several of her

novels are in _Everyman’s Library_, and there are other inexpensive

editions.

ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN (Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian).

_Friend Fritz._ _The Blockade of Phalsburg._ _Madame Thérèse._ _The

Story of a Conscript._ _Waterloo._

The two last named are in _Everyman’s Library_.

ANATOLE FRANCE (Thibault). _Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard._ _From a

Mother of Pearl Casket._

All the works of this writer are being translated into English. The

title given above in English is a translated collection of some of his

short stories.

ALICE FRENCH (Octave Thanet). _Stories of a Western Town._

ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-65). _Cranford._

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832). _Wilhelm Meister’s

Apprenticeship and Travels._

In Carlyle’s translation.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-74). _The Vicar of Wakefield._ _She Stoops to

Conquer._ _The Good-Natured Man._

KENNETH GRAHAME. _The Golden Age._ _Dream Days._

JAKOB AND WILHELM GRIMM. _Fairy Tales._

In _Everyman’s Library_.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909). _The Man Without a Country._

The volume under this title, published by Little, Brown & Co., contains

the best of Dr. Hale’s short stories. The title story is a masterpiece

of fiction and the greatest of all sermons on patriotism.

LUDOVIC HALÉVY. _The Abbé Constantin._

A charming story in simple French, and to be found translated into

English.

THOMAS HARDY. _Far from the Madding Crowd._ _The Return of the

Native._ _The Mayor of Casterbridge._ _A Pair of Blue Eyes._ _Under

the Greenwood Tree._

Incomparably the greatest of living novelists of our race. Certain

characteristics of his later novels make them neither pleasant nor

intelligible to young readers, but any of those here mentioned is as

well adapted to the reader of any age as are George Eliot’s “Adam Bede”

and Thackeray’s “Pendennis.”

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. _Uncle Remus._ _Nights with Uncle Remus._

_Mingo._ _Free Joe._

FRANCIS BRET HARTE (1839-1902). _The Luck of Roaring Camp._

The volume of this title, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,

contains the best of Harte’s short stories, and the best remain very

good indeed, though since they took the world by storm other writers

have given us a truer insight into the life which Harte was the first

to discover and proclaim. Harte is a capital humorist in his way, both

in his swaggering hearty short stories (see “Colonel Starbottle’s

Client”) and in his parodies (see “Condensed Novels”).

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-64).

No list of titles is necessary under Hawthorne’s name. America has no

other literary artist of his stature and perfection, and he is the one

American whose works we can say “you ought to read” entire--we dare say

it, that is, to American readers.

MAURICE HEWLETT. _Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay._

Mr. Hewlett is one of the ten or twelve important living writers of

English fiction. I have seen no book of his which is not good. I give

only one title; his brilliant and varied achievement in the past decade

makes difficult the selection of other titles for this limited list.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-94). _Elsie Venner._ _Guardian Angel._

Holmes’s fiction is subordinate both to his essays and his poems, and

should be postponed until the reader has become a true lover of the

Autocrat. The novels are good for the reason, if for no other, that

Holmes was one of the rare geniuses who cannot write otherwise than

with wisdom and charm.

ANTHONY HOPE (Hawkins). _The Prisoner of Zenda._

The first in point of time and excellence of a now numerous class of

historical novels in which the history and the geography as well as the

“story” are fictitious.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. _A Chance Acquaintance._ _The Lady of the

Aroostook._ _Dr. Breen’s Practice._ _A Modern Instance._ _The Rise of

Silas Lapham._ _The Minister’s Charge._ _April Hopes._ _The Flight of

Pony Baker._

THOMAS HUGHES (1823-96). _Tom Brown’s Schooldays._ _Tom Brown at

Oxford._

VICTOR HUGO (1812-85). _Les Miserables._ _Quatrevingt-Treize._ _Notre

Dame de Paris._ _Les Travailleurs de la Mer._

Hugo’s novels appear in several English translations.

HENRIK IBSEN. _Prose Dramas._

Edited and translated by William Archer and others. The reading of

Ibsen, the greatest dramatist of the nineteenth century, may be

postponed until the reader has come to mature views of life.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859). _Sketch-Book._ _Tales of a Traveler._

_Bracebridge Hall._

W. W. JACOBS. _Many Cargoes._ _Light Freights._ _Dialstone Lane._

A teller of delightfully droll stories. Like Frank R. Stockton, a much

finer artist than the more serious-minded critics would be disposed to

admit. It is difficult to select for this list the best of the score of

talented short-story writers of the day. Perhaps this is a good place

to slip in the name of a contemporary American whose fresh and original

stories have deservedly survived their day in the magazines and been

collected in volumes--Mr. Sidney Porter, “O. Henry.”

HENRY JAMES. _Roderick Hudson._ _Daisy Miller._ _The American._ _The

Portrait of a Lady._ _The Princess Casamassima._

Young readers should beware of misleading chatter about Mr. James

which appears in columns of book gossip and newspaper comment; it

attempts to turn Mr. James into a joke and caricatures his subtlety

and obscurity; it is analogous to the flippant and derisive nonsense

through which Browning lived to reach the people at last. “Roderick

Hudson” is a great novel and is as clear, strong, and easy to read as

the work of any other thoughtful novelist you may choose for comparison.

[Illustration: ELIOT]

SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909). _Country By-Ways._ _A Country Doctor._

_A White Heron._ _Strangers and Wayfarers._ _The Country of the

Pointed Firs._

Stories of the better classes of New England country folk written in a

style of unblemished clarity and sweetness.

MARY JOHNSTON. _Lewis Rand._

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-75). _Alton Locke._ _Hypatia._ _Westward Ho!_

RUDYARD KIPLING. _Plain Tales from the Hills._ _Many Inventions._

_Wee Willie Winkie._ _Life’s Handicap._ _Soldiers Three._ _In Black

and White._ _The Story of the Gadsbys._ _The Light that Failed._ _The

Jungle Book._ _The Second Jungle Book._ _The Day’s Work._ _Captains

Courageous._ _Kim._

In spite of a curiously eager disposition on the part of current

writers to regard Kipling’s career as over and done, he is the foremost

living writer of short stories in English, and of no other young living

writer can it be so safely averred that he has become one of the

established classics of his race.

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH KARL DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ (1777-1843). _Undine._

PIERRE LOTI (L. M. J. Viaud). _An Iceland Fisherman._

This and the autobiographical “Romance of a Child,” and several of

Loti’s books of travel are in English.

EDWARD G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON (1801-72). _Harold, the Last of the

Saxon Kings._ _Last Days of Pompeii._

Lord Lytton is one of the Victorian novelists whose great reputation is

growing rapidly less, and deservedly so, but his historical novels are