Yeast

by Charles Kingsley

Yeast a problem Charles Kingsley s Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism. Epicurism which, in my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, precisely because it looks at first sight most like an angel of light. The mass, again, are fancying that they are still adhering to the old creeds, the old church, to the honoured patriarchs of English Protestantism. I wish I could agree with them in their belief about themselves. To me they seem--with a small sprinkling of those noble and cheering exceptions to popular error which are to be found in every age of Christ's church--to be losing most fearfully and rapidly the living spirit of Christianity, and to be, for that very reason, clinging all the more convulsively--and who can blame them?--to the outward letter of it, whether High Church or Evangelical; unconscious, all the while, that they are sinking out of real living belief, into that dead self-deceiving belief-in-believing, which has been always heretofore, and is becomi We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

348 pages, Paperback

Published August 14, 2018

About the author

Charles Kingsley was an English clergyman, university professor, historian, and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and north-east Hampshire.

He was educated at Helston Grammar School before studying at King's College London, and the University of Cambridge. Charles entered Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1838, and graduated in 1842. He chose to pursue a ministry in the church. From 1844, he was rector of Eversley in Hampshire, and in 1860, he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge.

His writing shows an impulse to reconfigure social realities into dream geographies through Christian idealism.

Reviews

[Madison Gilcrease · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has nothing to do with bread. You will go through the entire book wondering why this is entitled, “Yeast: A Problem.” The author makes no mention of yeast until the epilogue, and only to say some people are “Yeasty of mind.” Most of the epilogue is just the author defending himself against imaginary haters on legitimate criticisms of the book. I honestly think he did this in one draft, and then reread it, found a lot of problems, and decided to note them all in the epilogue and defend them. The book is fragmenty, relies way too heavily on dialogue and long letters, and the themes are literally shoved down your throat.

What are the themes you ask? Labor, classism, Christianity, and this idea that it takes time for the “yeast” that is ideas to “ferment” in our minds. (The author never makes this direct correlation, but I did, and am, and there’s literally no other written reviews of this book anywhere that I can find, so I am unchallenged in my interpretation)

To summarize—an upper class man named Lancelot who is honestly dumb asl lives in a very delusional bubble of aristocracy. He breaks his legs because he is distracted by how blue this lady’s eyes are (Argemone, the love interest). He has to recover at her house (unclear) and he gradually falls in love with her. This love is the spark that makes him start to look at the world a little differently. The book notes that true love of one person requires us in someway to open the door to loving all people—“to truly love one is the first step towards truly loving all who bear the same flesh and blood with the beloved.”

To continue—“For now he began to feel that those faces did hide living sounds; formerly he had half believed- he had tried, but from laziness, to make himself wholly believe—that they were all empty masks, phantasms, without interest or significance for him”

Lancelot also encounters the lower class for basically the first time up close and personal during his recovery at Argemone’s family’s house (the Savingtons). He meets a poacher, and befriends one of the stewards of the Savington household. They venture out and about, and Lancelot realizes he has been living a life of delusion. People are real! Everyone has a soul! This was news to him!

Anyway, once the characters are set up, the plot proceeds to toil forwards only through dialogue. It’s difficult at times to determine who the speakers are, as the author doesn’t always tell you who is starting the stream of dialogue. And then it proceeds to go back and forth, and you really have to just use your best judgement to determine who is who.

Lancelot discusses class and labor ideas with the steward and these are the ideas that are planted as yeast in his mind. As the story continues, these ideas ferment and develop, and Lancelot rather jerkily makes some progress in character development. There are some chapters that are devoted to entire (multiple page) letters back and forth between Lancelot and his annoying cousin Luke about Catholicism. Luke went to Rome, so he has to write letters to chime in. I’m not really sure what purpose these letters serve, they don’t seem to help Lancelot develop a ton, and then they are followed by chapters where Lancelot is like “ugh I have to write that dude back” and I could have done without all of that.

I honestly thought this book was hilarious and have 10 pages of notes and quotes that made me laugh or seemed otherwise important in some way. I think I’m going to take those notes and condense them, and make an awful comedy set that will require the audience to first read this book.

You will literally never guess the ending. Are you going to read this book? I know you aren’t. I can’t find anything about this anywhere online and I don’t think anyone cares, so wHY is there 2.7 stars for this on Goodreads and no written reviews? I know the catholic letters sucked, but comeon, this was a trip. Okay anyway-the ending- Lancelot has a lot of forced dialogue with his new “mentor” (his whole life is f***ed at this point) and is like, I am going to be the best chimney sweeper ever,,, for JESUS CHRIST. And his mentor is like, alright, that is enough. The end.

Hilarious book. I don’t know if it was intentional. There were some decent insights into classism and labor, but nothing I can do anything with. Regardless, I find it fascinating to read a book where the same things I contemplate now in 2025 were being contemplated then (classism, labor-not the fever dream that is this plot). I’m sure the author would be sad to see that we are in the same boat (and worse) almost 200 years later. The themes in this novel (that are shoved down your throat-if you missed them, that is quite literally on you) are uncannily still so relevant. Also, if I was a teacher, I’d assign this book to my class because there’s no way to steal anyone else’s thoughts on it bc I can’t find anything about this online (idc that I’ve said this twice). I even asked chatgpt what this book was about (just curious if it had anything on this) and it gave me a summary of the Grapes of Wrath, then a summary of Gone with the Wind, then it said it was about someone named Ralph. I corrected it and said it’s about a dog named Mop (to add to the misinformation) and it said it would update its records. Sadly I’m sure it’s going to steal my review but I don’t care!! If you read this please talk to me about it, I am dying to discuss.

4 stars for the stupid catholic letters

Edited to add::


i forgot to add—in the epilogue, the author is like-hey I know you’re probably thinking, that ending made no sense and was really abrupt and a bit cataclysmic. But you can’t say that. Think of all the other cataclysmic events in history. Noah’s Ark. Soddom and Gomorrah. The fall of Rome. Pompeii. If all those things had cataclysmic endings, so can my book! Yes, he literally says this. Like omg, it is not that deep, just say you wanted to wrap this thing up and ran out of ideas. I also forgot to note that when Lancelot decides to become a chimney sweeper, he literally had never mentioned that before. His mentor isn’t even a chimney sweeper. I have no idea how he’s gonna learn that. Anyway.