# Greatest Authors of the 19th Century....American and English



## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

I'd like those so inclined to share who they believe are the greatest authors of the 19th Century, American and English.

American --- Twain
English --- Dickens

Agree?

If so, what are their greatest works?

If not, who are the greastest authors? and what are their greatest works?


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## baron (Jan 1, 2010)

I like anything by Edgar Allen Poe. Love his poetry Allone, The Raven, A Dream Within A Dream. Stories The Fall of the House of Usher, The Imp of the Perverse, in other words anything by Poe.

Still thinking about English.


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

baron said:


> I like anything by Edgar Allen Poe. Love his poetry Allone, The Raven, A Dream Within A Dream. Stories The Fall of the House of Usher, The Imp of the Perverse, in other words anything by Poe.
> 
> Still thinking about English.



Haven't read much Poe. Interesting man: Edgar Allan Poe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Here the take on the American novel by PBS: The American Novel | PBS


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## baron (Jan 1, 2010)

Poe lived such a tragic life between drugs and alchol,probably why he could write such tales. I'm checking out the American Novel Link. Thanks


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Charles Dickens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Mark Twain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?


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## Curt (Jan 1, 2010)

Ivan said:


> Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?


 
Not in universities, evidently.


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Curt said:


> Ivan said:
> 
> 
> > Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?
> ...


 
And to their detriment.


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## JennyG (Jan 1, 2010)

Ivan said:


> Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?


yes,- I do. At least, not American so much. I never had much time for Twain -- I quite enjoyed _Tom Sawyer_ as a child, but when I tried reading it to my own children I was completely put off by the hero's total indifference to truthfulness, which the author seems to be presenting as acceptable if not admirable (luckily they hadn't especially taken to it and didn't mind abandoning it barely started) I admire _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ very much, but I find it harder to read as I get older - too harrowing. I think Longfellow is pretty good (some fluff).
When it comes to nineteenth century English literature, you're absolutely spoiled for choice! I know who I find most edifying, but I would have a hard job deciding who to put first in any objective ranking.


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

JennyG said:


> Ivan said:
> 
> 
> > When it comes to nineteenth century English literature, you're absolutely spoiled for choice! I know who I find most edifying, but I would have a hard job deciding who to put first in any objective ranking.
> ...


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## JennyG (Jan 1, 2010)

ok - Jane Austen (assuming you don't want to relegate her to the previous century), the Brontes, Scott, George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Carlyle, Trollope, Hardy...
That's just in the order in which they came off the top of my head (and studiously NOT excluding anyone on the grounds that they're anathema to me personally)


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

JennyG said:


> ok - Jane Austen (assuming you don't want to relegate her to the previous century), the Brontes, Scott, George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Carlyle, Trollope, Hardy...
> That's just in the order in which they came off the top of my head (and studiously NOT excluding anyone on the grounds that they're anathema to me personally)



Would you venture to say that this was the Golden Age of English Literature?


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## au5t1n (Jan 1, 2010)

America - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Very interesting philosophical works. His philosophy is not Christian, but it has had a profound impact on America and American philosophy of life, so it's worth reading and it's very interesting. Read his Nature and read Self-Reliance especially. They're short.


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## JennyG (Jan 1, 2010)

I might.... It's certainly the age when you could be surest of an abundance of clean, wholesome, edifying and uplifting (and also literarily meritorious) writing. Nobody in a University English department would consider that a qualification for the title of THE golden age, but who cares?!


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## au5t1n (Jan 1, 2010)

As for fiction, Emerson heavily influenced Nathaniel Hawthorne, another great American author. But then again, I'll bet he's not very popular on the Puritan Board for his Scarlet Letter!


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## JennyG (Jan 1, 2010)

I've just fallen foul of the new format.
I wanted to edit my last post, to include a quote of the question it was in answer to. Editing used to be easy, but this time I couldn't persuade it to happen!


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## a mere housewife (Jan 1, 2010)

JennyG said:


> I've just fallen foul of the new format.
> I wanted to edit my last post, to include a quote of the question it was in answer to. Editing used to be easy, but this time I couldn't persuade it to happen!


 
Jenny, this happened to me too -- I thought it was another instance of my ability to disturb technology, but as it is a global phenomenon I won't take credit: I would guess that it means things are getting tweaked.


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## CharlieJ (Jan 1, 2010)

American: I like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Twain bores me.

British: John Keats, a brilliant meteor momentarily illuminating the sky.


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## a mere housewife (Jan 1, 2010)

Keats is splendid; I also love Shelley and Swinburne, though my favorite poet from that century simply because of how much her poetry has comforted and given me words in sorrow is Christina Rossetti. Joseph Conrad could possibly have at least a leg or something trapped in that century as well (he is considered a British writer), with a few novels previous and_ Heart of Darkness_ published in 1899 and_ Lord Jim_ published in 1900 -- he is a brilliant and significant writer, much better in his craftsmanship than Dickens and many others in my opinion (though I love Charles Dickens). Robert Louis Stevenson is very much worth reading -- he wrote beautifully -- I don't know that anyone can describe things, like the color of wave or the way rain falls etc., so perfectly true to life as he does.

For Americans, I think Henry James though again overlapping a bit should get a mention, and he was superb technically -- I think he was much better technically than Mark Twain (though I have laughed very hard over 'Cannibalism in the Cars'). But sometimes I feel a little impatient with him, because for all the developing tension beneath the intricately wrought surface of everyone's interactions, there is very little eternity in it all. I would like to read more of Poe -- I found his writing difficult to read when I tried as a teenager because of the sort of dark resurgence. Ruben quotes things to me which I love, and tells me they are by Poe (mostly, I think, he quotes from 'The Conqueror Worm').

I will always think of Shakespeare, the man himself, as the golden age of English literature, though . It doesn't hurt that John Donne was his contemporary.


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## a mere housewife (Jan 1, 2010)

(Oh, I forgot to say, that if you're not really terribly grown up as I'm afraid I'm not, there is also Lewis Carroll and George Macdonald and the_ Jungle Books_ -- who are all perfectly wonderful


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Thank you, Heidi! 

Now are there any contemporary writers, 20th Century on, that are in the class of the aforementioned writers of the previous century?


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## Skyler (Jan 1, 2010)

Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" series was good. 

Also, though not originally in English, Maurice LeBlanc's "Arsene Lupin" series was literarily excellent, though its main character was a kleptomaniac and, assuredly, unconfessional. 

Baroness Emma Orczy's "The Scarlet Pimpernel" was also good, though some of the sequels began to get repetitive.

I also enjoyed G. K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" series. Despite his being Catholic I found many things to appreciate in his writing.

Those are my favorite series from that time period--all late 19th to early 20th century authors. Maybe you're looking for earlier writers, though?


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## Ivan (Jan 1, 2010)

Skyler said:


> Maybe you're looking for earlier writers, though?



I'm only looking for what others appreciate.


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## a mere housewife (Jan 1, 2010)

I only know about literature I appreciate , which leaves me with a lot of glaring gaps. I think for later Americans that Edith Wharton is very skilled but somewhat icily regular; and I have loved things by Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, Harper Lee, Dorothy Parker, Madeleine L'Engle, Marilynne Robinson (_Housekeeping_ is one of the best books I've read), James Marshall who writes about hippos that wear Indian headdresses and such so you can imagine how much I enjoy it  and Stephen R. Donaldson. Also, I'm not sure Charles Schulz can be classed as an 'author' -- but his books are some of my favorites.

For more contemporary British people, I enjoyed things by E. M. Forster of whose style Katherine Mansfield justly said that 'the teapot is beautifully warm -- but there ain't gonna be no tea' , Katherine Mansfield herself who is intensely wonderful, Rupert Brooke's poetry, and Eliot's, anything by C. S. Lewis (though my favorite book of his is _Till We Have Faces_) and Tolkien, T. H. White's _Once and Future King_ which is a hysterical and heartbreaking retelling of the Arthur legend that I have reread and hope to reread again, Huxley's _Brave New World_, Virginia Woolf's stately and undisturbed consciousness of everything, Dorothy Sayers who is again very skilled, though again I lack patience with some of her fiction -- most especially her more romantic mysteries, which seem to promise more significance than they possess, Winnie the Pooh, and Peter Pan, P. G. Wodehouse (who needed a more ruthless editor but I think he's always enjoyable), Edith Nesbit who wrote really charming childrens' stories, George Orwell (he is very good writer, but I love him most for his sense of human dignity and his rectitude); George Bernard Shaw who I find more mentally stimulating than terribly significant [edit: though Shaw was actually halfway in the 19th century]; and I think Chesterton's novels are also wonderful -- _The Man Who Was Thursday_ is one of my favorite books (and his biographies, though not terribly biographical, do I think give a flavor of the person he is writing about, and are also worth reading because of his own flavor).


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## Ivan (Jan 2, 2010)

Heidi, you are a widely-read young lady. I'm impressed.


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## a mere housewife (Jan 2, 2010)

Ivan, that's very kind, but I'm sincerely not all that impressively well read: I read slowly and only what I enjoy reading and very much like a housewife and not a truly literary person; most people I know have easily out-read me (perhaps in different areas). 

Books *are* one of the consolations of being unwell -- unfortunately my concentration suffers now with illness and I find it much more difficult to read anything of sustained length than I used to (and I rarely read fiction with the small concentration I have anymore -- but thinking about these books makes me want to reread a couple of them -- I was thinking that perhaps it would help 'exercise' what capacity for focus I have .


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## Wayne (Jan 2, 2010)

Heidi:

Have you read anything by Alexander McCall Smith? Particularly his more recent works all began in newspaper serial form, and so are written in shorter chapters.
That might lend well to your current problems with concentration.

Probably requiring more attention, but a hoot for those who know literature, Jasper Fforde's novels (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, First Among Sequels, etc.) have to be mentioned. 

But then I'm reminded that this is supposed to be a thread about 19th Century authors. Pardon my digression.


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## JennyG (Jan 2, 2010)

Ivan's right, Heidi, you are impressively well-read!
If it's taken on into the early 20th C I'd pick out the poetry of Housman, sad and beautiful, but on the other hand he's a good example of a dilemma I have especially with that turn of the century period. There's lots of good writing, but the world-view is an unsurmountable obstacle. 
Without saying they aren't any good as writers, I can't bear Hardy or E M Forster or Woolf or Galsworthy (of the Forsyte Saga), or going forward a bit, D H Lawrence. I don't even like Edwardian children's books much - such as E Nesbit and especially Frances Hodgson Burnett (does anyone in America know _The Secret Garden_?) - though the _Swallows and Amazons_ books are good, and _The Wind in the Willows_ and A A Milne of course!!! (not Disney)
Actually you have quite a little clutch of children's authors across the Atlantic too which are a bit of a turn-off - _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_ by whoever it's by, and_ Anne of Green Gables_ and even _What Katy Did_ - I liked that as a child, but what on earth religion exactly was the egregious Cousin Helen promulgating??


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## JennyG (Jan 2, 2010)

....and little Lord Fauntleroy


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## JennyG (Jan 2, 2010)

Ivan said:


> Now are there any contemporary writers, 20th Century on, that are in the class of the aforementioned writers of the previous century?


I think I will stick out my neck and say No, there aren't!
Tolkien has an enormous rep, but how good is he really?


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## a mere housewife (Jan 2, 2010)

Jenny, you are also very kind: I know you are much more _consistently _read than I am. 



JennyG said:


> Ivan said:
> 
> 
> > Now are there any contemporary writers, 20th Century on, that are in the class of the aforementioned writers of the previous century?
> ...



Off with her head! Off with her head! 

I don't like to trust overmuch to my own judgment, but I do have to murmur just audibly over my flamingo mallet that I quite disagree. (Though I agree re: Tolkien, who, wonderful as he is, is not I think nearly the best writer of his time.)

Jenny what do you think of Oscar Wilde? He didn't get brought up earlier, and I pulled something out by him this morning thinking about him. I think he is amazing -- but I personally have to be careful about flying too close to that sort of flame: his writing is too much like incredibly beautiful music that works too intensely on feelings or ideas, brought out of their proper place to meet it (Lewis describes something in _the Pilgrims' Regress_, with the man and his daughter -- I forget their names -- where the music plays, that reminds me of Oscar Wilde).


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## JennyG (Jan 2, 2010)

a mere housewife said:


> Off with her head! Off with her head!


hahaha! I think we need a new smilie!



> I don't like to trust overmuch to my own judgment, but I do have to murmur just audibly over my flamingo mallet that I quite disagree. (Though I agree re: Tolkien, who, wonderful as he is, is not I think nearly the best writer of his time.)


and there we need still another!! I'm training up my own flamingo to be an attack flamingo. 
I don't suppose Tolkien cuts it in academic circles actually. However he generally tops popular polls of "the nation's favourite books" or similar in this country. And I was thinking about him because I recently re-read the LOTR, being a bit immobilised. I found in the process that for quite a lot of it I don't have the patience any more, and I also think he may even be harmful, in that some fans put his mythology in the place where holy Scripture should be. I don't know who would generally be given the top place among 20th century writers. Eliot among poets perhaps, though I prefer Yeats personally



> Jenny what do you think of Oscar Wilde? He didn't get brought up earlier, and I pulled something out by him this morning thinking about him. I think he is amazing -- but I personally have to be careful about flying too close to that sort of flame: his writing is too much like incredibly beautiful music that works too intensely on feelings or ideas, brought out of their proper place to meet it (Lewis describes something in _the Pilgrims' Regress_, with the man and his daughter -- I forget their names -- where the music plays, that reminds me of Oscar Wilde).


Ha! I wish I could take up the cudgels here, but the truth is I know hardly any Wilde. I know _The Importance of being Earnest_, because we have a tape of the classic old 40's film version which the children used to be always playing, but hardly anything else. After a while that play annoyed me, funny and clever as it is, because the wit so often seemed to consist simply in saying whatever was the opposite of the truth. 
To be honest, I'm afraid I'm prejudiced against his writing by what I know of the man himself. Not just him either - there's something that rubs me up the wrong way about almost all the serious writers of that era, when society was determinedly setting about casting off Biblical Christianity . A hallmark of Edwardian literature is the way you'll find them deifying Art or sex or free love or various muzzy and/or weird spiritualities, almost anything really -- while of course still living off the accumulated moral capital of the despised Victorian age.
I'm not always consistent (as my daughter's fond of pointing out) for eg I grew up with Housman and his blue remembered hills, and his poetry still gives me the shivers even though his worldview is hopelessly wrong. 

Which do you think are the pick of 20th C writers? (just so long as you don't say James Joyce...)


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## py3ak (Jan 2, 2010)

Ivan said:


> I'd like those so inclined to share who they believe are the greatest authors of the 19th Century, American and English.
> 
> American --- Twain
> English --- Dickens
> ...


 
From my reading, rather than there being a clearly dominant figure, a decent number of Americans have one or two works that are very worthwhile, and then a lot of lesser stuff. The value of _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ or _Ethan Frome_ or _The Turn of the Screw_, for instance, cannot sensibly be denied, but that doesn't mean that any of those authors are clearly the greatest. The same thing is true in the 20th century, as can be illustrated by noting that some things by F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway and others are really fine, and others should probably be stricken from the record.

England in that time period obviously gives you much more to choose from, but the time delimitation is so vague that again it is difficult to pick a clear figure. Shelley wrote early in the 1800s, and he is obviously a transcendent poet - more Green Lantern than Plastic Man, if I may be forgiven the Justice League analogy. Jane Austen is the Empress of English, and wrote novels which are about as close to perfection as it's at all likely anyone will come. Obviously the two are miles apart in many ways - their choice of subjects, their choice of medium, their philosophy and morals; and that distance in those ways makes it very hard to evaluate their relative level of skill. Fortunately, we have the option of reading both and needn't give the palm to the "The Sensitive Plant" or _Persuasion_. But part of the difficulty in these discussions is that people don't always keep clear in their minds the difference between a "great author" and "an author who happens to be a great man" and what is perhaps most confusing, when it is "a great author who happens to be a great man".


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## JennyG (Jan 2, 2010)

> But part of the difficulty in these discussions is that people don't always keep clear in their minds the difference between a "great author" and "an author who happens to be a great man" and what is perhaps most confusing, when it is "a great author who happens to be a great man".


I think I can say with my hand on my heart that I've got those two things separate in my mind, together with what I'd consider as a third, = "a good man" (unless that was what you meant by a "great man" - ambiguous or what?) - and maybe even a 4th, "someone who fully understands the truth about God and Man"
It's just that personally I would never consider handing the palm to anyone who only ticked the box "great author", (assuming that signifies merely skill in wielding the medium) My personal palm, I mean. I'm not expecting to lay down a standard for anyone else. It's the reason I class Charlotte Yonge so high (and James Joyce so low)


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## Montanablue (Jan 2, 2010)

I think Elizabeth Gaskell should get a mention - North and South, anyone? 

Heidi, your mention of T.H. White reminded me of how much I loved Once and Future King and how I keep meaning to get it for my youngest brother...


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## a mere housewife (Jan 2, 2010)

Kathleen, I haven't read _North and South_, but I did enjoy _Wives and Daughters_ -- it's been a long time since I read it and it's the only thing of hers that I have read, but I really enjoyed it (and A&E did a very nice movie) and remember thinking that it was very ably written. I think it was her last book? (It was unfinished?)

Jenny, I think C. S. Lewis is a better poet than Eliot, and a better writer than Tolkien -- but yes Eliot is painfully wonderful. Certainly I believe Lewis, Aldous Huxley at his best, T. H. White at his, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Marilynne Robinson, and I think George Orwell in some of his novels, are the equals of writers in the previous century (of course some people stand out for all time, like Shakespeare or Jane Austen, but we're speaking 'by and large'?).

Lewis spoke of poetry as a balance between formal and natural speech rhythms, and he was brilliant at it. Here is a favorite poem of his:

My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run
With longing, are in me
Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one
That drips to find the sea.
I have no care for anything thy love can grant
Except the moment’s vain
And hardly noticed filling of the moment’s want
And to be free from pain.
Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep
Nor slumber, who didst take
All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep
Watch for me till I wake.
If thou think for me what I cannot think, if thou
Desire for me what I
Cannot desire, my soul’s interior Form, though now
Deep-buried, will not die,
— No more than the insensible dropp’d seed which grows
Through winter ripe for birth
Because, while it forgets, the heaven remembering throws
Sweet influence still on earth,
— Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes
Still turning round the earth.


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## JennyG (Jan 3, 2010)

> Jenny, I think C. S. Lewis is a better poet than Eliot, and a better writer than Tolkien


Then do you think you and I may be applying the same, ultimately extra-literary criteria? 
I'm sure Lewis himself never judged his own poetry so highly. Didn't he once say, like Scott, that all he really wanted to be was a poet, but he went into prose writing (and like Scott excelled at it) after he was forced to admit to himself that his poetry just didn't reach the standard to which he aspired...? He will have been applying severely objective criteria in making that judgment no doubt. I mean the sort of criteria that would be sure to bring Eliot out on top.
I love that one you posted. I have just dug out a book of Lewis' poetry which I had totally forgotten I owned and now I'm going to reread them all. 
But Aldous Huxley? What do you consider his best? I read _Brave New World_ not long since (first time since my teens,) and thought it quite vapid - just about fit for the fate which has overtaken it, of being a done-to-death school set-book! (that's in the British sense of "school")
Kathleen,- yes, yes, Mrs Gaskell definitely deserves a place in the roll of honour! I haven't read _North and South_ yet, though I'm waiting for my Amazon copy right at the moment, but _Cranford_ is the most perfect little book imaginable. I don't know whether it makes me laugh most, or cry most


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## a mere housewife (Jan 3, 2010)

Jenny, Lewis was a very humble man . I do sincerely try not to make literary judgments on extra literary criteria, though I'm sure I don't always succeed. No, I meant that I think by literary standards, Lewis' poetry is quite good, and better than Eliot's, which is not so strict in form -- nor so lucid (nor was it was ever meant to be: he explained that the 'Notes on the Wasteland' were merely filler material and the whole thing was strung together without -- his own word -- a real 'structure'. I tend to think structure is an objective literary criteria . Lewis was not really a huge fan of Eliot's style of poetry -- he saw some aspects of it as part of a general demise, in which opinion I think he has been amply borne out by the evidence. Perhaps his poetry isn't recognised for its technical merit simply because he makes it look so easy -- he got the natural part down so well.

I think _Brave New World_ is incredible. Huxley understood that the problem is with man's moral nature; and that happiness cannot function as the rule of morality -- and that freedom is not from moral constraint.

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what many happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."

…."I claim them all."

And he took them all, and he killed himself. He paid for his sins, because to him, they were indeed sins that had to be paid for. This is the redemptive lesson of the book: the recognition of moral slavery is more valuable, more human, than free love: it is a freedom and a humanity even worth dying for. The Savage who wants God is one of the few people left who can appreciate Shakespeare; or who could possibly be miserable enough, having a view of perfection, and so of failure, to take his own life. Yes this is bleak, and falls short of hope. It is certainly not the rather weak but heartwarming good sentiment at the foundation of a moral structure like that of Dickens (whose sentimental sort of morality is only redeemed artistically in my view, because of judgment: everyone ultimately gets what they deserve). But it is quite a glaring light on the darkness of modern man, and it is certainly not vapid.


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## Montanablue (Jan 3, 2010)

Not to break into the conversation, but I wanted to mention that I've always found Dickens to be a bit exasperating for exactly the reasons you mention, Heidi. I enjoy reading his novels - I think they're quite funny - but I always find myself shaking my head at the end. He's so sentimental. I have the same problem with L.M. Alcott (who I love in every other respect), but I can forgive her, because her less popular novels (which she wrote for herself and not to sell) avoid the sentimental and moralizing endings. I've always wondered (hoped) if it was the same with Dickens - that he was a deeper human being, but that he wrote to put food on his table and so had to please the crowds.


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## jambo (Jan 3, 2010)

Ivan said:


> Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?


 
I would read a bit of Dickens and also Conan Doyle. In terms of Conan Doyle I am not just thinking of his Sherlock Holmes stories but his numerous other writings. Since childhood I always enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson and in fact having just recently watched a documentary about Stevenson and the background to his writing of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde I am about to reread that too. Another 19th century author I like is Thomas Hardy. I am not so keen on the ones where he uses the local Dorset dialect in his stories but the likes of the Mayor of Casterbridge is a good book. The only American author I have read from the 19th century has been Edgar Allen Poe who is similar to Conan Doyle in many ways.


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## jambo (Jan 3, 2010)

Wayne said:


> Heidi:
> 
> Have you read anything by Alexander McCall Smith? Particularly his more recent works all began in newspaper serial form, and so are written in shorter chapters.
> That might lend well to your current problems with concentration.
> ...


 
Alexander McCall Smith is delightful. Coming from Edinburgh I loved his 44 Scotland Street stories as he really captures the Edinburgh character. His Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series are light and pleasant to read. He seems quite a prolific writer as well as he has 2-3 different series of books which are regularly added to. 

BTW pardon my digression too!


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## Wayne (Jan 3, 2010)

> I've always wondered (hoped) if it was the same with Dickens - that he was a deeper human being, but that he wrote to put food on his table and so had to please the crowds.



Dickens suffered greatly at the hands of publishers who failed to pay royalties. He then hit on the idea of giving public readings as a way of raising funds for his family, and twice toured the US for that purpose. He also campaigned for copyright laws in response to the abuse he had suffered.


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## Montanablue (Jan 3, 2010)

Wayne said:


> > I've always wondered (hoped) if it was the same with Dickens - that he was a deeper human being, but that he wrote to put food on his table and so had to please the crowds.
> 
> 
> 
> Dickens suffered greatly at the hands of publishers who failed to pay royalties. He then hit on the idea of giving public readings as a way of raising funds for his family, and twice toured the US for that purpose. He also campaigned for copyright laws in response to the abuse he had suffered.


 
Oh really interesting. Thanks for that tidbit.


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## Wayne (Jan 3, 2010)

Unscrupulous publishers were a problem from almost the beginning of the modern press. For instance, see the preface to Calvin's sermons on Deuteronomy for some discussion of the problem.


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## Ivan (Jan 3, 2010)

Wayne said:


> > He then hit on the idea of giving public readings as a way of raising funds for his family, and twice toured the US for that purpose.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Jon Peters (Jan 3, 2010)

Henry James and Charles Dickens


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## JennyG (Jan 5, 2010)

a mere housewife said:


> Jenny, Lewis was a very humble man . I do sincerely try not to make literary judgments on extra literary criteria, though I'm sure I don't always succeed. No, I meant that I think by literary standards, Lewis' poetry is quite good, and better than Eliot's, which is not so strict in form -- nor so lucid (nor was it was ever meant to be: he explained that the 'Notes on the Wasteland' were merely filler material and the whole thing was strung together without -- his own word -- a real 'structure'. I tend to think structure is an objective literary criteria . Lewis was not really a huge fan of Eliot's style of poetry -- he saw some aspects of it as part of a general demise, in which opinion I think he has been amply borne out by the evidence. Perhaps his poetry isn't recognised for its technical merit simply because he makes it look so easy -- he got the natural part down so well.
> 
> I think _Brave New World_ is incredible. Huxley understood that the problem is with man's moral nature; and that happiness cannot function as the rule of morality -- and that freedom is not from moral constraint......it is quite a glaring light on the darkness of modern man, and it is certainly not vapid


Sorry not to reply before... I've been horizontal with something fluey. I see I need to rethink (not for the first time!) It's just long enough since I read BNW for me to have lost sight of exactly what gave me that impression. Maybe just that the moral is a bit too obvious and pushed in the reader's face? But then again it may stem (as with Wilde) from a deep suspicion of Huxley's own ethical foundations. Up until my twenties at least, I read and admired so many essentially wordly authors, with a total lack of discrimination, that now (scanning them all narrowly for spiritual truth) I may be in danger of throwing some babies out with their bathwater.
I'm very interested in your thoughts on Lewis and Eliot, but that must wait till I've read more - I couldn't yesterday.
I've always found Eliot annoying for the calculated obscurity of his references, which he seems to flaunt in a look-at-me sort of way```; also for his lack of form, because I agree that structure must always be a desideratum. To be fair, he's one of the few poets I know who actually makes rhythm out of his formlessness - but I still can't quite forgive him fo having started the free verse trend, just as Tolkien started the fantasy trend, and gave rise to a million rubbish imitators...
We part company on one thing though - I DON"T try not to make literary judgements on extra-literary criteria!! I mean when it comes to the final, overall assessment, which is going to determine whether I ever read a book again, or not. I think Hardy is a brilliant novelist for eg, but I'm unrepentant in my resolve never, ever to read him again. 
Do you think one should judge solely on literary merit?


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## a mere housewife (Jan 5, 2010)

Jenny, no, I don't think one should judge solely on literary merit -- but I think the *literary* judgment should be made on that basis (it's just that literary value is not the sole determining factor in a work's worth) and that literary merit should not be undervalued? However I think when you throw out literary value completely, or give it a lesser place than it has as a matter of excellence (and so of the glory of God) or allow extra literary factors to determine literary value itself, you wind up with everybody's contributions being equal because of what it means to someone somewhere -- with a *spiritual* democracy (you've probably read Lewis' wonderful essay about that, too?) which is damaging to producing great work of any sort.

Yes you are right about Eliot -- his form is his own music entirely, a river of imagery and rhythm; and he had the ability to call you after him with his obscurity (when I first read him in all common sense childishness I assumed what I later found to be true: that his obscurity was meant more suggestively than coherently and was to be enjoyed as such: I laughed when I was told that he'd written *notes* on the Wasteland, and then found out that he himself called them a 'hoax' which so many literary people fell for -- so perhaps we have to come to this kingdom as little children too . I think yes, the problem when people throw away form, is that lesser artists without the brilliance to pull off their own thing have nothing to train the abilities they do have into something meaningful, beautiful, worth saying? The world of poetry has ended not with a bang but a whimper. But I'm not sure that Tolkien should be held responsible for his imitators, etc. I haven't decided about things like that yet. I would hate to have missed Tolkien, personally.

I _love_ Thomas Hardy:
_
The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss . . ._


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## a mere housewife (Jan 5, 2010)

Jenny, I was unsure about adding re: form and Eliot -- my thoughts are much more tentative in this regard (though my reactions are rather strong  -- that it seems like there is also a moral question of form which enters into literary evaluation -- I don't think literary merit is divorced from moral considerations. Substance can't be separated from form; and I think fundamentally art celebrates what _is_. I think works of 'uncreation' are evil (I don't think I'm easily angry; but I have been angry with some works of art because they slap people with chaos and ingratitude: they celebrate formlessness and the void. However much work went into them, I cannot believe there is so much meritorious skill involved in reducing intelligible things to chaos, as in calling intelligible things out of it. & however morally tainted in other ways many works of art are -- as with Hardy -- I think the joy or wonder of creation implicit in them still makes them a fundamentally positive thing -- which is why I can enjoy many things the 'moral' of which I disagree with; I just can't enjoy smears of paint that look like vomit passed off as making something new out of the old world.)


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## Theogenes (Jan 5, 2010)

I like James Fenimore Cooper...The Last of the Mohicans and other of his "Leatherstocking Tales".


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## JennyG (Jan 10, 2010)

a mere housewife said:


> Jenny, I was unsure about adding re: form and Eliot -- my thoughts are much more tentative in this regard (though my reactions are rather strong  -- that it seems like there is also a moral question of form which enters into literary evaluation -- I don't think literary merit is divorced from moral considerations. Substance can't be separated from form; and I think fundamentally art celebrates what _is_. I think works of 'uncreation' are evil (I don't think I'm easily angry; but I have been angry with some works of art because they slap people with chaos and ingratitude: they celebrate formlessness and the void. However much work went into them, I cannot believe there is so much meritorious skill involved in reducing intelligible things to chaos, as in calling intelligible things out of it. & however morally tainted in other ways many works of art are -- as with Hardy -- I think the joy or wonder of creation implicit in them still makes them a fundamentally positive thing -- which is why I can enjoy many things the 'moral' of which I disagree with; I just can't enjoy smears of paint that look like vomit passed off as making something new out of the old world.)


Just to give this one a belated wee kick - since I see it's still open:
I've been mulling over what you say here. I think we agree at bottom on the criteria for making literary judgments, only maybe I'm applying it in more of a blanket, less nuanced way than you. It's something I think about a lot, (especially since reading Iain Murray's _Undercover Revolution_ last year).


> I don't think literary merit is divorced from moral considerations. Substance can't be separated from form;


-I agree 100%


> and I think fundamentally art celebrates what _is_.


This is really the problem, as I see it. It does - but it shouldn't! It should only celebrate what is Godly, and lovely, and of good report. An awful lot follows from that of course. But mainly...I don't think it's enough to avoid the out-and-out satanic. A writer like Hardy who uses his God-given skill to commingle beauty with godlessness is in some ways worse, because so much more seductive. (don't mind my bossy opinionativeness....and NB I'm very inconsistent in practising the principles I'm so ready to lay down)


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## a mere housewife (Jan 11, 2010)

Jenny, I should probably disclaim up front that I've been up sleepless so this may either not be intelligible, or be much less concise than it should be. I think you may have mistaken me when I said that art -- human creation, in the image of God -- celebrates what 'is' -- I meant something more fundamental than I expressed, I think: that it celebrates _being_ as against non-being. This is simply 'form' as against chaos, and I think that has a moral aspect. Here is a favorite quote of Chesterton:



> 'There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real. It is the fundamental fact of being, as against not being; it is unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may sometimes be unthinking about it; unthinking and especially unthanking. For he who has realized this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets or arguments for negation, and that under all our grumblings there is a subconscious substance of gratitude. That light of the positive is the business of the poets, because they see all things in the light of it more than do other men. Chaucer was a child of light and not merely of twilight, the mere red twilight of one passing dawn of revolution, or the grey twilight of one dying day of social decline. He was the immediate heir of something like what Catholics call the Primitive Revelation; that glimpse that was given of the world when God saw that it was good; and so long as the artist gives us glimpses of that, it matters nothing that they are fragmentary or even trivial; whether it be in the mere fact that a medieval Court poet could appreciate a daisy, or that he could write, in a sort of flash of blinding moonshine, of the lover who “slept no more than does the nightingale”. These things belong to the same world of wonder as the primary wonder at the very existence of the world; higher than any common pros and cons, or likes and dislikes, however legitimate. Creation was the greatest of all Revolutions. It was for that, as the ancient poet said, that the morning stars sang together; and the most modern poets, like the medieval poets, may descend very far from that height of realization and stray and stumble and seem distraught; but we shall know them for the Sons of God, when they are still shouting for joy. This is something much more mystical and absolute than any modern thing that is called optimism; for it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise.'



-on Chaucer

On top of this, there is the work's moral purpose, which may or may not be to promote the law of God (and in most cases even in moralistic literature, it isn't). But I think we are perhaps thinking of 'whatsoever things are true' in different ways -- you want things to be true in the sense of correct moral judgment on the part of the artist, if I'm understanding rightly; and I think that when things are honest they lend themselves to correct moral judgment, whatever the views of the artist: indeed the more honest they are, the more aptly they lend themselves -- which is why I think much 20th century lit not only equal to, but superior to, much 19th as regards moral impact. Hardy is certainly honest regarding the beauty of things that can be apprehended by sense, and the longing we have for something more spiritual than mere pleasure, and he also shows the heartbreak and the emptiness, and the tragedy of mistaking the hunger and thirst that are in us for something that could be satisfied by throwing God aside in pursuit of contingent things. His 'celebration' is more of an 'its my party and I'll cry if I want to' affair; but he is quite accurate about the wonder of the party. And he is quite accurate that in departing from God, even the wonder becomes a burden -- his sort of party can only end in tears.

Augustine says this: 



> For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver, and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much influence, and each other sense hath his proper object answerably tempered. Worldly honour hath also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery; whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these, we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor decline from Thy law. The life also which here we live hath its own enchantment, through a certain proportion of its own, and a correspondence with all things beautiful here below. Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these, and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken, -- Thou, our Lord God, Thy Truth, and Thy law. For these lower things have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things . . .


(Confessions, Book 2)

Because sin is not a desire for nothing, but for something -- and because it is an immoderate desire, not a desire without place whatsoever -- there is a fundamental goodness pervading many works of even fallen men. Here is another poem by Hardy that perhaps makes my point better than I can: there is the wonder of what is, and always will be; but there's the whole cleft down the middle, this terrible gap of unfulfillment -- even the promises are cited to make poignant a much bleaker and emptier eschatology. Yet this is surely honest, as regards the hopelessness of disbelieving the promises, refusing to wait on God, and turning your back on all that is established and sure: it's honesty makes it, against its will, morally sound.

_By briefest meeting something sure is won;
It will have been:
Nor God nor Demon can undo the done,
Unsight the seen,
Make muted music be as unbegun,
Though things terrene
Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.

So, to the one long-sweeping symphony
From times remote
Till now, of human tenderness, shall we
Supply one note,
Small and untraced, yet that will ever be
Somewhere afloat
Amid the spheres . . ._


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## etexas (Jan 11, 2010)

Anyone like Saki? Brithish...Saki was the pen name....I forget his real name.....I LOVE his short-stories, to me the Short Story is BIG challenge it contains flow and elements of a novel but of corse compacted....I call it a challenge because with a Novel, a writer has "wriggle room" to unkink elements....great short stories... Kipling,Saki, those guys, masters indeed. Saki did write 4? novels (I think) I have never read them, but his Edwardian/Victorian Shorts are so hilarious in skewering the manners and customs and culture of his day....it has been a while....I need to see if I can get Saki on my Kindle!!!!! Thank you for this Thread. I have not thought of Saki in years!!!!


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## JonathanHunt (Jan 11, 2010)

Ivan said:


> Does anybody read 19th Century American and English literature?


 
I have a degree in the subject...


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## JonathanHunt (Jan 11, 2010)

But seriously, Ivan, you mentioned 20th Century - I have studied both 19th and 20th and in my opinion the standard is much lower in the 20th.

However, to name some names:

Phillip Larkin
Seamus Heaney
Anton Chekov (ok, not English or American)
Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca IS my favourite novel of all time)
Phillip K Dick
TS Eliott

I will also say that some 20th century literature I had to study was utterly vile, amoral and blasphemous, and I took pleasure in literally tearing several paperbacks apart as soon as I knew I had passed. I could have sold them on - but I couldn't live with giving them any further circulation.


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## JennyG (Jan 12, 2010)

JonathanHunt said:


> But seriously, Ivan, you mentioned 20th Century - I have studied both 19th and 20th and in my opinion the standard is much lower in the 20th.
> 
> However, to name some names:
> 
> ...


 
good for you...though I can hardly believe they could be as bad as some of the texts now set at St Andrews University (my son read English there).


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## tommyb (Jan 18, 2010)

American - Melville: his depth, characterization and prose just draw me in and won't let go

Brittish - Joseph Conrad or Rudyard Kipling. Granted, neither are the "literary giants" that many mentioned above are but I love them both.


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## Me Died Blue (Feb 3, 2010)

(Yes, I am still alive. lol)

Lately, predominantly from a couple English classes, I've definitely become partial the to work of Conan Doyle, and also of Dickens. But with Dickens, it's largely included even some of his less-popular works as well, particularly _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_.

But more than that, I have to say that I've predominantly developed a strong interest in the whole "circle" of authors that includes Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Doris Lessing (more current), and especially Anaïs Nin. With them and similar authors, most of them interacted and were mutually influenced in one way or another, and somewhat represent a whole "genre" or "era" or their own. Woolf's _To the Lighthouse_, Lawrence's _Women In Love_, Miller's _Tropic of Cancer_, Lessing's _The Golden Notebook_ and Nin's journals (as originally published, as well as recent unexpurgated excerpts, especially _Henry and June_) in particular are widely acknowledged more or less as masterpieces.


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## BertMulder (Feb 3, 2010)

His problem with obedience to God's law, particularly the 3rd commandment, really puts me off Mark Twain...


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## kvanlaan (Feb 6, 2010)

I am a real sucker for Hemingway (b. 1899). And Roald Dahl (sixteen years too late). And Alan Paton (three years too late, wrong hemisphere). And Chaim Potok (29 years too late).

The problem I have with Dickens (and a number of other Brits) is that he has a tendency to "get lost in the furniture" at some point. I've read plenty of them but, for instance, there is a little 'aside' in the Pickwick papers that I can never get past. It is the Leviticus of British literature. Bleh. (Wilde does this to a lesser extent at times.)

Poe rocks.

PS - My apologies if anyone is offended by the comparison of any part of the word of God to something that is so boring it makes my teeth fall out. It is my own failing, but that's the one place in the Bible that I get stuck and just can't get past...


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