Four Years of Novel Reading

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,