Young E. Allison (1853–1932)

This was a mixed bag: a few of these essays are very enjoyable, others are vile. There's only one chapter that's worth reading, imho, and that's the one on Robinson Crusoe.

The first chapter is prime 19thC nastiness, claiming that women can't ever be proper readers because they are women and require happy endings and are too dainty. Once you push (or skip) pas that, there's a spirited defense of voracious novel-reading, regardless of perceived quality and moral standing: "A novel is a novel, and there are no bad ones in the world, except those you do not happen to like." If you don't read trash, how will you recognize greatness? DIfferent books mean different things at different ages.

There's an enormously fun chapter on "Robinson Crusoe", which is called "The very best First-Novel-To-Read in all fiction". I can agree with that. (Allison goes on to say that "[e]very particle of greatness in Robinson Crusoe is compressed within two hundred pages, the other four hundred being about as mediocre trash as you could purchase anywhere between cloth lids." I'll also agree with that.)

Other chapters, about his childhood, about villains and about heroes, are heavy on the nostalgia, with long asides on favourite novels that often are not well-known today. Though Count Fosco (from The woman in white) is definitely an awesome villain.

The closing chapter is again skippable. In it, Allison attributes the lack of proper female heroines in novels to the sacred state of motherhood, a woman's ultimate incarnation, being too indescribable a wonder; furthermore, he says, creative genius always "has in it the germ of masculinity, which, of all things, to real men is abhorrent in woman," and so female heroines are a contradiction in terms. He ends by advocating "quiet home murder" of suffragettes, a neglected manly duty, "as society approves now and then."

So yeah. The Robinson Crusoe chapter is the only one worth excerpting.… (més)

Amusing. In this short lecture (courtesy of Project Gutenberg), Allison defends the virtues of novel reading from the Victorian-era moral guardians who see in it a gateway to slovenliness and moral decrepitude. He also warns against defending reading fiction by saying "it's only for fun, to divert weary minds; where's the harm in that?", since reading constitutes so much more than mere pleasure: it also builds up one's morals and mental strength.

Enjoyable, if only for the grand vocabulary flourishes and 19th-century imagery that are marshalled to present the few substantial ideas of this lecture.… (més)