Four Years of Novel Reading

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FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL READING AN ACCOUNT OF AN EXPERIMENT IN POPULARIZING THE STUDY OF FICTION
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
BOSTON, U.S.A.
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY R. G. MOULTON.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: The Study of Fiction By Professor R. G. Moulton.
The "Backworth Classical Novel-Reading Union" By its Secretary, Mr. John U. Barrow.
Four Years' Work Done By The Union Representative Essays:
Why Is Charles Dickens A More Famous Novelist Than Charles Reade? By Miss Ellen Cumpstox
The Character Of Clara Middleton By Mr. Joseph Fairxey.
The Ideal of Asceticism By the Rev. C. G. Hall.
Character Development In "Romola" By Mr. Thomas Dawson.

Description:
Four Years of Novel Reading
By Richard G. Moulton, Ph.D.,
Professor of Literature in English in the University of Chicago, and author of "The Literary Study of the Bible," etc.
An account of an experiment to popularize the study of fiction. Professor Moulton's introduction treats of the "Dignity of Fiction." The "Backworth Classical Novel Reading Union" is sketched and a tabulated account of four years' work is given, followed by representative essays. The book is of interest and value to the general reader, the student and teacher.

INTRODUCTION
THE STUDY OF FICTION
FICTION may be described at the present time as just succeeding in living down a prejudice. It is now looked upon as a worldly and frivolous thing. But the time has been when it would have been accounted by many to be sinful. Most of us are old enough to recollect the time when a schoolboy would have his stock of story-books confiscated by his teacher, while a schoolgirl might find herself sent to bed for the offence of being caught with a novel. Now our graver moralists go no farther than an affectionate warning: they will not condemn fiction, they will not judge others; but if their young friend wishes to make the best use of his time he will leave novel-reading to the idle, and restrict himself to literature' founded on fact. I am afraid that if I were called upon for an affectionate warning, it would run the other way. It is good to make our reading catholic; but if my young friend be straitened in leisure and opportunity, I would counsel him to leave to more fortunate persons the literature that limits itself by fact, and make the best of his time by going straight to the world's great fiction.
If ever there might have been doubt about such counsel, it has ceased to be doubtful in the present day. Our great masters of the novel have been legion: from Miss Edge worth and Jane Austen to George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, Kingsley, not to speak of the crowd of living novelists, some of whose masterpieces will not yield in rank even to the works of the greatest masters. Of the trinity who make the Dii Majores of our modern epoch, Tennyson deals largely with fiction; Browning's way is to weave a fictitious atmosphere about a mere kernel of fact; while William Morris our English Homer throws his whole literary message into the form of story. A similar predominance of fiction may be asserted of French and German literatures, so far as those literatures are read outside their native countries. And Russia is being admitted into the circle of great literary powers mainly on the strength of its novels. In such an age of fiction a vow of total abstinence is equivalent to a sentence of excommunication from contact with the best minds.
If we turn to the literature of the past, serious or light, it will appear that universality is more readily obtained by fictitious form than by any other device. The wisdom of primitive life has nearly all perished; that which has been kept alive has for the most part the form of fables and legends. In the great ages, what name is more suggestive of literary dignity than the name of Plato? Yet Plato has presented his whole philosophy in a fictitious setting, imaginary dialogues in which the characters, plot, and movement are as carefully elaborated as in an epic or drama. Higher authority yet may be quoted. Of the world's greatest Teacher, the one point of literary form which most impressed his contemporaries was his preference for fiction. "Without a parable spake he not unto them."
Whence, then, has arisen the strong prejudice of our fathers against novels, and the fainter echo of it by our graver moralists of to-day; while those who read fiction half apologize for what they put forward only as a relaxation or venial indulgence?
There is a certain tell-tale phrase that usually comes up in discussions of the subject, fiction is contemptible because it is all " made up." Has not real life, we are asked, difficulties enough and sorrows of its own, without