A Little Bit of Luck: The Making of an Adventurous Scholar

by Richard D. Altick

In slightly less than three hundred pages, Altick, a self-described child of the Depression, takes us from his birth in 1915 through his early interest in reading turn-of-the-century bestsellers, rarely the Bible or the usual classics, to his secondary school, college, and postgraduate education, pausing frequently to provide fascinating portraits of now-vanished scholars and educational practice. It is all both so similar and so different. Always modest and always happy exploring libraries, Altick, a man known for his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of subjects he's studied--research techniques, the nineteenth-century reader, Victorian popular entertainment, and so on--described himself as having a primarily journalistic bent. Modestly plugging away at research apparently far too daunting for the rest of us, he produced valuable work that has stood the test of time.

291 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Richard Altick was Regent’s Professor of English, Emeritus, at The Ohio State University and the author of numerous important works in the field of literary studies.

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Altick, the author of such essential guides to Victoriana as VICTORIAN PEOPLE AND IDEAS and THE SCHOLAR ADVENTURERS and VICTORIAN STUDIES IN SCARLET, describes his life as a scholar in rich and vivid detail. It pleased this particular reader, who has always felt that Altick surely read everything, to know that he never finished reading JUDE THE OBSCURE. Finally -- something I read that Altick had not. The book falls apart in its last 1/4, however, in which Altick describes somewhat tediously his interest in museum displays. But otherwise this is an inspiring read to someone like me, who tends to loathe theory and relishes the description of good, old-fashioned, historicist scholarship.