Confessions and Criticisms

The novel of our times is susceptible of many definitions. The American publishers of Railway libraries think that it is forty or fifty double-column pages of pirated English fi...

It is not with Americans as with other peoples. Our position is more vague and difficult, because it is not primarily related to the senses. I can easily find out where England...

Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder--to be mystified; and it thanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this craving. The magicians of old knew that...

Contemporary criticism will have it that, in order to create an American Literature, we must use American materials. The term "Literature" has, no doubt, come to be employed in...

Literature is that quality in books which affords delight and nourishment to the soul. But this is a scientific and skeptical age, insomuch that one hardly ventures to take for...

During the winter of 1879, when I was in London, it was my fortune to attend, a social meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain eminent publisher. The rooms were full o...

In 1869, when I was about twenty-three years old, I sent a couple of sonnets to the revived _Putnam's Magazine_. At that period I had no intention of becoming a professional wri...

The hunter and the sportsman are two very different persons. The hunter pursues animals because he loves them and sympathizes with them, and kills them as the champions of chiva...

On an accessible book-shelf in my library, stand side by side four volumes whose contents I once knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of twenty years, are yet tolerably dis...

The producers of modern fiction, who have acquiesced more or less completely in the theory of art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware that a large class of persons still exi...

Before criticising Mr. Mallock's little essay, let us summarize its contents. The author begins with an analysis of the aims, the principles, and the "pseudo-science" of modern...