A Book for All Readers | Page 9

many of whose works were deemed
objectionable, either from their highly sensational character, or their
bad style, or their highly wrought and morbid pictures of human
passions, or their immoral tendency. This list no doubt will surprise
many, as including writers whose books everybody, almost, has read,
or has been accustomed to think well of. It embraces the following
popular authors, many of whose novels have had a wide circulation,
and that principally through popular libraries.
Here follow the names:
Mary J. Holmes, Mrs. Henry Wood, C. L. Hentz, M. P. Finley, Mrs. A.
S. Stephens, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mrs. Forrester, Rhoda Broughton,
Helen Mathers, Jessie Fothergill, M. E. Braddon, Florence Marryat,
Ouida, Horatio Alger, Mayne Reid, Oliver Optic, W. H. S. Kingston, E.
Kellogg, G. W. M. Reynolds, C. Fosdick, Edmund Yates, G. A.
Lawrence, Grenville Murray, W. H. Ainsworth, Wilkie Collins, E. L.
Bulwer-Lytton, W. H. Thomes, and Augusta Evans Wilson.
Bear in mind, that only English and American novels are included, and
those only of the present century: also, that as to many which are
included, no imputation of immorality was made. Such a "black list" is
obviously open to the charge of doing great injustice to the good repute
of writers named, since only a part of the works written by some of
them can properly be objected to, and these are not specially named.
Bulwer-Lytton, for example, whose "Paul Clifford" is a very improper
book to go into the hands of young people, has written at least a dozen
other fictions of noble moral purpose, and high literary merit.
Out of seventy public libraries to which the list was sent, with inquiry
whether the authors named were admitted as books of circulation, thirty
libraries replied. All of them admitted Bulwer-Lytton and Wilkie
Collins, all but two Oliver Optic's books, and all but six Augusta Evans
Wilson's. Reynolds' novels were excluded by twenty libraries, Mrs.

Southworth's by eleven, "Ouida's" by nine, and Mrs. Stephens's and
Mrs. Henry Wood's by eight. Other details cannot find space for notice
here.
This instance is one among many of endeavors constantly being made
by associated librarians to stem the ever increasing flood of poor fiction
which threatens to submerge the better class of books in our public
libraries.
That no such wholesome attempt can be wholly successful is evident
enough. The passion for reading fiction is both epidemic and chronic;
and in saying this, do not infer that I reckon it as a disease. A librarian
has no right to banish fiction because the appetite for it is abused. He is
not to set up any ideal and impossible standard of selection. His most
useful and beneficent function is to turn into better channels the
universal hunger for reading which is entertaining. Do readers want an
exciting novel? What can be more exciting than "Les Miserables" of
Victor Hugo, a book of exceptional literary excellence and power?
Literature is full of fascinating stories, admirably told, and there is no
excuse for loading our libraries with trash, going into the slums for
models, or feeding young minds upon the unclean brood of pessimistic
novels. If it is said that people will have trash, let them buy it, and let
the libraries wash their hands of it, and refuse to circulate the stuff
which no boy nor girl can touch without being contaminated.
Those who claim that we might as well let the libraries down to the
level of the poorest books, because unformed and ignorant minds are
capable of nothing better, should be told that people are never raised by
giving them nothing to look up to. To devour infinite trash is not the
road to learn wisdom, or virtue, or even to attain genuine amusement.
To those who are afraid that if the libraries are purified, the masses will
get nothing that they can read, the answer is, have they not got the
entire world of magazines, the weekly, daily, and Sunday newspapers,
which supply a whole library of fiction almost daily? Add to these
plenty of imaginative literature in fiction and in poetry, on every
library's shelves, which all who can read can comprehend, and what
excuse remains for buying what is neither decent nor improving?

Take an example of the boundless capacity for improvement that exists
in the human mind and human taste, from the spread of the fine arts
among the people. Thirty years ago, their houses, if having any
decoration at all, exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored
lithographs and chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and
bad coloring vied with each other to produce pictures which it would be
a mild use of terms to call detestable. Then came the two great
international art expositions at Philadelphia and Chicago, each greatly
advancing by the