Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
I resumed novel-reading, of which I had been very fond, and compromised with my conscience, by resolving that at the end of one year I would throw all such books aside, and seek the salvation of my soul. Only two thirds of that year are gone, and here I am dying! Fool, fool that I was, to sell my soul for a novel to prefer the excitement of an idle tale to the joys of religion."
Novel-reading has always been a passion with Americans, but at the period referred to the best novels were published at such high prices that but few could afford to buy them. The masses were compelled to put up with the cheap, flashy stories which were so well known some years ago as "yellow covers."
Few books on their publication have created a greater furore than Lord Lytton's "Eugene Aram," which was published in 1832. One section of the novel-reading public hailed its moving, dramatic story with manifest delight, while the other severely condemned it on the plea of its false morality.
For "all mankind love a lover;" and the world, in consequence, has given itself up to novel-reading, not knowing, unfortunately, how much better that rôle is taken by the birds than by the common run of story-book heroes.
Katerina Ivanovna, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well as heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Amalia Ivanovna, saying "she knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it was the business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a high-class boarding-school to look after die Waesche, and as for novel-reading, that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be silent."
And as Alexander, on perusing the Iliad, found by congenial sympathy the image of Achilles stamped on his own ardent soul, and felt himself the hero he was studying; and as Correggio, on first beholding a picture which exhibited the perfection of the graphic art, prophetically felt all his own future greatness, and cried out in rapture: 'And I, too, am a painter! So a thorough-paced novel-reading miss, at the close of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels within herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius, and triumphantly exclaims: 'And I, too, am an author! The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and, by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to produce a fourth; till every fresh production, like the prolific progeny of Banquo, is followed by
As for Stevenson, whom men read with the thrill of boyhood rising new in their veins, I believe in my soul women would tear leaves out of his novels to tie over the tops of preserve jars, and never dream of the sacrilege. Now I hold Thackeray and Stevenson to be the absolute test of capacity for earnest novel-reading.
Great care should therefore be taken that, while genuine sensibility is cherished, its extremes should be avoided, and the mind fortified by strengthening the higher powers. Novel-reading strengthens the passions, weakens the virtues, and diminishes the power of self-control.
The development of variety of fiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious. The prejudice against novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has taken all fields for its province; everybody reads novels. Three-quarters of the books taken from the circulating library are stories; they make up half the library of the Sunday-schools.
Novels novels forbidden their fictitious nature no argument against them arguments of the Quakers are, that they produce an affectation knowledge a romantic spirit and a perverted morality and that by creating an indisposition towards other kinds of reading, they prevent moral improvement and real delight of mind hence novel-reading more pernicious than many other amusements.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking