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Letters to Dead Authors
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
- GenresWritingNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1886
About the author
Andrew Lang
2,866 books573 followersTales of the Scottish writer and anthropologist Andrew Lang include
The Blue Fairy Book
(1889).
Andrew Gabriel Lang, a prolific Scotsman of letters, contributed poetry, novels, literary criticism, and collected now best folklore.
The Young Scholar and Journalist
Andrew Gabriel Lang, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children, lived in Selkirk in the Scottish borderlands. The wild and beautiful landscape of childhood greatly affected the youth and inspired a lifelong love of the outdoors and a fascination with local folklore and history. Charles Edward Stuart and Robert I the Bruce surrounded him in the borders, a rich area in history. He later achieved his literary Short History of Scotland .
A gifted student and avid reader, Lang went to the prestigious Saint Andrews University, which now holds a lecture series in his honor every few years, and then to Balliol College, Oxford. He later published Oxford: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes about the city in 1880.
Moving to London at the age of 31 years in 1875 as an already published poet, he started working as a journalist. His dry sense of humor, style, and huge array of interests made him a popular editor and columnist quickly for The Daily Post, Time magazine and Fortnightly Review. Whilst working in London, he met and married Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang, his wife.
Interest in myths and folklore continued as he and Leonora traveled through France and Italy to hear local legends, from which came the most famous The Rainbow Fairy Books . In the late 19th century, interest in the native stories declined and very few persons recounting them for young readers. In fact, some educationalists attacked harmful magical stories in general to children. To challenge this notion, Lang first began collecting stories for the first of his colored volumes.
Lang gathered already recorded stories, while other folklorists collected stories directly from source. He used his time to collect a much greater breadth over the world from Jacob Grimm, his brother, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other less well sources.
Lang also worked as the editor, often credited as its sole creator for his work despite the essential support of his wife, who transcribed and organised the translation of the text, to the success.
He published to wide acclaim. The beautiful illustrations and magic captivated the minds of children and adults alike. The success first allowed Lang and Leonora to carry on their research and in 1890 to publish a much larger print run of The Red Fairy Book , which drew on even more sources. Between 1889 and 1910, they published twelve collections, which, each with a different colored binding, collected, edited and translated a total of 437 stories. Lang, credited with reviving interest in folklore, more importantly revolutionized the Victorian view and inspired generations of parents to begin reading them to children once more.
Last Works
Lang produced and at the same time continued a wide assortment of novels, literary criticism, articles, and poetry. As Anita Silvey, literary critic, however, noted, "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession... he is best recognized for the works he did not write," the folk stories that he collected.
He finished not the last Highways and Byways of the Border but died.
Andrew Gabriel Lang, a prolific Scotsman of letters, contributed poetry, novels, literary criticism, and collected now best folklore.
The Young Scholar and Journalist
Andrew Gabriel Lang, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children, lived in Selkirk in the Scottish borderlands. The wild and beautiful landscape of childhood greatly affected the youth and inspired a lifelong love of the outdoors and a fascination with local folklore and history. Charles Edward Stuart and Robert I the Bruce surrounded him in the borders, a rich area in history. He later achieved his literary Short History of Scotland .
A gifted student and avid reader, Lang went to the prestigious Saint Andrews University, which now holds a lecture series in his honor every few years, and then to Balliol College, Oxford. He later published Oxford: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes about the city in 1880.
Moving to London at the age of 31 years in 1875 as an already published poet, he started working as a journalist. His dry sense of humor, style, and huge array of interests made him a popular editor and columnist quickly for The Daily Post, Time magazine and Fortnightly Review. Whilst working in London, he met and married Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang, his wife.
Interest in myths and folklore continued as he and Leonora traveled through France and Italy to hear local legends, from which came the most famous The Rainbow Fairy Books . In the late 19th century, interest in the native stories declined and very few persons recounting them for young readers. In fact, some educationalists attacked harmful magical stories in general to children. To challenge this notion, Lang first began collecting stories for the first of his colored volumes.
Lang gathered already recorded stories, while other folklorists collected stories directly from source. He used his time to collect a much greater breadth over the world from Jacob Grimm, his brother, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other less well sources.
Lang also worked as the editor, often credited as its sole creator for his work despite the essential support of his wife, who transcribed and organised the translation of the text, to the success.
He published to wide acclaim. The beautiful illustrations and magic captivated the minds of children and adults alike. The success first allowed Lang and Leonora to carry on their research and in 1890 to publish a much larger print run of The Red Fairy Book , which drew on even more sources. Between 1889 and 1910, they published twelve collections, which, each with a different colored binding, collected, edited and translated a total of 437 stories. Lang, credited with reviving interest in folklore, more importantly revolutionized the Victorian view and inspired generations of parents to begin reading them to children once more.
Last Works
Lang produced and at the same time continued a wide assortment of novels, literary criticism, articles, and poetry. As Anita Silvey, literary critic, however, noted, "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession... he is best recognized for the works he did not write," the folk stories that he collected.
He finished not the last Highways and Byways of the Border but died.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 9, 2020
Is this the perfect way to make a critique on a poet and his work? Probably
September 15, 2021
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
September 15, 2021
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Merged review:
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
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................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
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Merged review:
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................................................................................................
LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
by Andrew Lang (1892)
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Beautiful, delicious response to all detractors of Jane Austen, written in form of a letter to Jane Austen, a letter written in the beautiful style with rectitude and propriety that would suit a letter to Jane Austen written by a gentleman, of her times with education and courteous demeanour.
................................................................................................
"Madam — If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
""As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation.
"'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of today, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott "slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! How limited the life which you knew and described! How narrow the range of your incidents! How correct your grammar!
"As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and Catherine; women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard?
"Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden fleurs-de-lys – ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians – maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of dukes, where are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and at home.
"You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to young ladies."
"Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield Park." But you timidly decline to tackle passion. “Let other pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can." Ah, there is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we get lords (and very queer lords) even from republican authors, born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. ... "
Oh, what a satisfactory slap to the likes of Firkins, whose aspersions cast on the dead Jane Austen, not only against her works alone, but her person as well, were so much of a torture to her loving and loyal relatives, especially all the more so because they were baseless and false, with no other objective than gain of a name for oneself by using name of someone who couldn't respond, because she wasn't only a lady, she was also resting in her final resting place in her tomb in Winchester cathedral.
And he continues.
" ... I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law established. The dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides from esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the higher pantheism to the higher paganism, we look for in vain among your studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?
"You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our attention – the great controversy on creation or evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the land laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a land reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a private had been flogged, without introducing a chapter on flogging in the army. But you formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! In fact, madam, as you were born before analysis came in, or passion, or realism, or naturalism, or irreverence, or religious open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. ... I think one prefers them so, and that English women should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. ... "
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April 10, 2021
Originally published in 1886
"Letters to Dead Authors contains twenty-two letters written by Andrew Lang (1844–1912) to bards, poets, and novelists from Homer to Rabelais to Austen. An incredibly prolific writer from the Scottish Borders, Lang’s name can be found on 249 books and thousands of newspaper articles. As a literary critic he inspired love, fear, respect, and laughter. He was sometimes acerbic, sometimes reverential, and usually witty. There is more glowing praise in Letters to Dead Authors than scathing criticism. In fact he expresses a very, very high opinion of most of his correspondents." https://publicdomainreview.org/collec...
I. TO W. M. THACKERAY - 3.5 Stars
"William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, author and illustrator, who was born in India. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
II. TO CHARLES DICKENS - 3.5 Stars
III. TO PIERRE DE RONSARD - 3 Stars
"11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585 was a French poet or, as his own generation in France called him, a 'prince of poets'. The character and fortunes of Ronsard's works are among the most remarkable in literary history, and supply in themselves a kind of illustration of the progress of French literature during the last three centuries. It was long his fortune to be almost always extravagantly admired or violently attacked." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_...
IV. TO HERODOTUS - 3 Stars
Born "c. 484 – c. 425 BC [he] was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey). He is known for having written the book The Histories, a detailed record of his 'inquiry' on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He is widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials and then critically arranging them into a historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is often referred to as 'The Father of History,' a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
V. EPISTLE TO MR. ALEXANDER POPE - 2.5 Stars
"21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744 is seen as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet of the early 18th century. He is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted writer in English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having become popular in common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexand...
VI. TO LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA - 3.5 Stars
"c. 120 AD - c. 200 AD was the author of more than 70 known dialogues & treatises and is considered the supreme Ancient Greek satirist. Throughout his writings, Lucian interconnects the stories of gods and men, rich and poor, philosopher and skeptic, tyrant and subject, all with an eye for entertainment and humor." http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/dok....
VII. TO MAITRE FRANCOYS RABELAIS - 3 Stars
"Born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553 [Rabelais] was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. [He was a] Ecclesiastical and anticlerical, Christian and considered by some as a free thinker, a doctor and having the image of a 'bon vivant,' the multiple facets of his personality sometimes seem contradictory. Caught up in the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation, Rabelais showed himself to be both sensitive and critical towards the great questions of his time. Subsequently, the views of his life and work have evolved according to the times and currents of thought." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3...
VIII. TO JANE AUSTEN - 2.5 Stars
IX. TO MASTER ISAAK [IZAAK] WALTON - 4 Stars
c. 1593 – 15 December 1683 was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend John Donne. They have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_W...
X. TO M. CHAPELAIN - 3.5 Stars
Jean Chapelain born 4 December 1595 – 22 February 1674 was a French poet and critic during the Grand Siècle, best known for his role as an organizer and founding member of the Académie française. Chapelain acquired considerable prestige as a literary critic, but his own major work, an epic poem about Joan of Arc called La Pucelle, (1656) was lampooned by his contemporary Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ch...
XL TO SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILI.E, KT - 1 Star
"Sir John Mandeville is the supposed author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a travel memoir which first circulated between 1357 and 1371. The earliest surviving text is in French. By aid of translations into many other languages, the work acquired extraordinary popularity. . . . The actual author of the tales remains as uncertain as the existence of the English knight Sir John Mandeville himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ma...
XII. TO ALEXANDRE DUMAS - 4 Stars
XIII. TO THEOCRITUS - 3 Stars
"Born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Sicilian poet and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral Pastoral poetry is first attributed to the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus, several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside (probably reflecting the landscape of the island of Cos where the poet lived) involve dialogues between herdsmen.
XIV. TO EDGAR ALLAN POE - 3.5 Stars
XV. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART - 3.5 Stars
XVI. TO EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA - 2 Stars
"Also called Eusebius Pamphili, (flourished 4th century, Caesarea Palestinae, Palestine), bishop, exegete, polemicist, and historian whose account of the first centuries of Christianity, in his Ecclesiastical History, is a landmark in Christian historiography." https://www.britannica.com/biography/...
XVII. TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY - 3 Stars
XVIII. TO MONSIEUR DE MOLlERE, VALET DE CHAMBRE DU ROI - 3.5 Stars
"Baptiste Poquelin, known as Molière, is a French actor and playwright, baptized on January 15, 1622 in Paris, where he died on February 17, 1673. Coming from a family of Parisian merchants, he joined at the age of 21 with a dozen comrades, including the actress Madeleine Béjart, to form the troupe of the Illustrious Theatre which, despite the collaboration of renowned playwrights, failed to establish itself in Paris. For thirteen years, Molière and his friends Béjart roamed the southern provinces of the kingdom in a touring troupe maintained by several successive protectors. During this period, Molière composed some pranks or small comedies and his first two great comedies. Returning to Paris in 1658, he quickly became, at the head of his troupe, the favorite actor and author of the young Louis XIV and his court, for which he designed many shows, in collaboration with the best stage architects, choreographers and musicians of the time. He died at the age of 51, a few hours after having held for the fourth time the title role of the Imaginary Sick. A great creator of dramatic forms, playing the lead role in most of his plays, Molière has exploited the diverse resources of comedy — verbal, gesture and visual, situational — and practiced all kinds of comedy, from farce to character comedy. He created individualized characters, with complex psychology, who quickly became archetypes. A lucid and penetrating observer, he painted the manners and behaviors of his contemporaries, sparing little more than the clergymen and high dignitaries of the monarchy, much to the delight of his audience, both at the court and in the city. Far from being limited to innocuous entertainment, his great comedies call into question well-established principles of social organization, sparking resounding polemics and the enduring hostility of devout circles." https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ba...
XIX. TO ROBERT BURNS - 2.5 Stars
XX. TO LORD BYRON - 1 Star
XXI. TO OMAR KHAYYAM - 1 Star
XXII. TO Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS - 3 Stars
"8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: 'He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words.' " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace
"Letters to Dead Authors contains twenty-two letters written by Andrew Lang (1844–1912) to bards, poets, and novelists from Homer to Rabelais to Austen. An incredibly prolific writer from the Scottish Borders, Lang’s name can be found on 249 books and thousands of newspaper articles. As a literary critic he inspired love, fear, respect, and laughter. He was sometimes acerbic, sometimes reverential, and usually witty. There is more glowing praise in Letters to Dead Authors than scathing criticism. In fact he expresses a very, very high opinion of most of his correspondents." https://publicdomainreview.org/collec...
I. TO W. M. THACKERAY - 3.5 Stars
"William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, author and illustrator, who was born in India. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
II. TO CHARLES DICKENS - 3.5 Stars
III. TO PIERRE DE RONSARD - 3 Stars
"11 September 1524 – 27 December 1585 was a French poet or, as his own generation in France called him, a 'prince of poets'. The character and fortunes of Ronsard's works are among the most remarkable in literary history, and supply in themselves a kind of illustration of the progress of French literature during the last three centuries. It was long his fortune to be almost always extravagantly admired or violently attacked." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_...
IV. TO HERODOTUS - 3 Stars
Born "c. 484 – c. 425 BC [he] was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey). He is known for having written the book The Histories, a detailed record of his 'inquiry' on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He is widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials and then critically arranging them into a historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is often referred to as 'The Father of History,' a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
V. EPISTLE TO MR. ALEXANDER POPE - 2.5 Stars
"21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744 is seen as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet of the early 18th century. He is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted writer in English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having become popular in common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexand...
VI. TO LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA - 3.5 Stars
"c. 120 AD - c. 200 AD was the author of more than 70 known dialogues & treatises and is considered the supreme Ancient Greek satirist. Throughout his writings, Lucian interconnects the stories of gods and men, rich and poor, philosopher and skeptic, tyrant and subject, all with an eye for entertainment and humor." http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/dok....
VII. TO MAITRE FRANCOYS RABELAIS - 3 Stars
"Born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553 [Rabelais] was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. [He was a] Ecclesiastical and anticlerical, Christian and considered by some as a free thinker, a doctor and having the image of a 'bon vivant,' the multiple facets of his personality sometimes seem contradictory. Caught up in the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation, Rabelais showed himself to be both sensitive and critical towards the great questions of his time. Subsequently, the views of his life and work have evolved according to the times and currents of thought." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3...
VIII. TO JANE AUSTEN - 2.5 Stars
IX. TO MASTER ISAAK [IZAAK] WALTON - 4 Stars
c. 1593 – 15 December 1683 was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend John Donne. They have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_W...
X. TO M. CHAPELAIN - 3.5 Stars
Jean Chapelain born 4 December 1595 – 22 February 1674 was a French poet and critic during the Grand Siècle, best known for his role as an organizer and founding member of the Académie française. Chapelain acquired considerable prestige as a literary critic, but his own major work, an epic poem about Joan of Arc called La Pucelle, (1656) was lampooned by his contemporary Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ch...
XL TO SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILI.E, KT - 1 Star
"Sir John Mandeville is the supposed author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a travel memoir which first circulated between 1357 and 1371. The earliest surviving text is in French. By aid of translations into many other languages, the work acquired extraordinary popularity. . . . The actual author of the tales remains as uncertain as the existence of the English knight Sir John Mandeville himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ma...
XII. TO ALEXANDRE DUMAS - 4 Stars
XIII. TO THEOCRITUS - 3 Stars
"Born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Sicilian poet and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral Pastoral poetry is first attributed to the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus, several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside (probably reflecting the landscape of the island of Cos where the poet lived) involve dialogues between herdsmen.
XIV. TO EDGAR ALLAN POE - 3.5 Stars
XV. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART - 3.5 Stars
XVI. TO EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA - 2 Stars
"Also called Eusebius Pamphili, (flourished 4th century, Caesarea Palestinae, Palestine), bishop, exegete, polemicist, and historian whose account of the first centuries of Christianity, in his Ecclesiastical History, is a landmark in Christian historiography." https://www.britannica.com/biography/...
XVII. TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY - 3 Stars
XVIII. TO MONSIEUR DE MOLlERE, VALET DE CHAMBRE DU ROI - 3.5 Stars
"Baptiste Poquelin, known as Molière, is a French actor and playwright, baptized on January 15, 1622 in Paris, where he died on February 17, 1673. Coming from a family of Parisian merchants, he joined at the age of 21 with a dozen comrades, including the actress Madeleine Béjart, to form the troupe of the Illustrious Theatre which, despite the collaboration of renowned playwrights, failed to establish itself in Paris. For thirteen years, Molière and his friends Béjart roamed the southern provinces of the kingdom in a touring troupe maintained by several successive protectors. During this period, Molière composed some pranks or small comedies and his first two great comedies. Returning to Paris in 1658, he quickly became, at the head of his troupe, the favorite actor and author of the young Louis XIV and his court, for which he designed many shows, in collaboration with the best stage architects, choreographers and musicians of the time. He died at the age of 51, a few hours after having held for the fourth time the title role of the Imaginary Sick. A great creator of dramatic forms, playing the lead role in most of his plays, Molière has exploited the diverse resources of comedy — verbal, gesture and visual, situational — and practiced all kinds of comedy, from farce to character comedy. He created individualized characters, with complex psychology, who quickly became archetypes. A lucid and penetrating observer, he painted the manners and behaviors of his contemporaries, sparing little more than the clergymen and high dignitaries of the monarchy, much to the delight of his audience, both at the court and in the city. Far from being limited to innocuous entertainment, his great comedies call into question well-established principles of social organization, sparking resounding polemics and the enduring hostility of devout circles." https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ba...
XIX. TO ROBERT BURNS - 2.5 Stars
XX. TO LORD BYRON - 1 Star
XXI. TO OMAR KHAYYAM - 1 Star
XXII. TO Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS - 3 Stars
"8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: 'He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words.' " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace
January 10, 2023
interesting
Written in the style of the person ‘interviewed’. Some interesting insights too - or expressions I hadn’t thought of. I enjoyed reaching back in time. I also liked the scottish slant and bias in several of the essays. Wish he had taken on shakespeare! But Jane Austen, Shelley, Scott and Burns are excellent, while intrigues by Edgar Allen Poe. (Until i remembered the scottish connection too).
Written in the style of the person ‘interviewed’. Some interesting insights too - or expressions I hadn’t thought of. I enjoyed reaching back in time. I also liked the scottish slant and bias in several of the essays. Wish he had taken on shakespeare! But Jane Austen, Shelley, Scott and Burns are excellent, while intrigues by Edgar Allen Poe. (Until i remembered the scottish connection too).
December 29, 2021
An interesting novel to which an author provides his insight, love, and concerns for authors.
November 1, 2022
I usually really enjoy Lang on books, but this was not one of his finest, disappointingly.
January 17, 2015
Nah, sorry...
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