My first Substack post was a chunk from an essay called “Oblivion”—it laid out the mechanics of my project, and explained how I jettisoned my reluctance to read books (mainly fiction) from other times (and places), thereby permitting myself to scarf down a few dozen classics I’d avoided all my life—including several that went straight to my personal Short List: Portrait of a Lady, Ethan Frome, Jane Eyre, Tristram Shandy.
Today, a look at non-classics.
When I didn’t already know what to read for a given year, I usually began at Wikipedia—for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1847 in_literature
But even works listed here are only a fraction of what was published; sometimes a deeper dig was needed . . . because this was supposed to be fun, not an exercise in drudgery. And it was fun (and still is).
[More about the nature of this fun in a subsequent post.]
“Non-classics” is a term baggy enough to mean all but the few titles voted into time’s Hall of Fame. But a little drill down:
a) All of Jane Austen’s books are read today—ditto for the Brontë sisters, and a handful of others. Often, though, we remember writers (even prolific ones) for a single work—sometimes because one of a writer’s books really is head and shoulders above the others. I think of Nevil Shute who published two dozen novels; most are good reads [Requiem for a Wren, A Town Like Alice], but On the Beach is a great book. More commonly it’s because the Public Memory has only so much shelf space for old books. Even relatively modern writers are subject to this fierce winnowing: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is iconic, but Something Happened shouldn’t go unread.
b) Some writers widely read and well-regarded in their own day are known only by scholars now, or dedicated reading groups—for instance, participants in the annual madness called Victober [you can check out this phenomenon on YouTube—don’t miss the indomitable Katie Lumsden]. The why underlying this fact is another topic I’ll return to later. In any case, I didn’t know Elizabeth Gaskell [North and South, Wives and Daughters, Cranford] or Maria Edgeworth [Castle Rackrent, Ennui] or George Gissing [The Odd Women, New Grub Street], or Wilkie Collins [The Moonstone, The Woman in White].
c) But (at last!) the real point of today’s post: Looking for a book published in particular year turned up a number of titles I’d never have run into otherwise. Here’s a few of those:
Father and Son [memoir], Edmund Gosse 1907
Red Pottage, Mary Cholmondeley, 1899
A Child of the Jago, Arthur Morrison, 1896
Trilby, George du Maurier, 1894
The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith, 1892
Anne, Constance Fenimore Woolson, 1882
The Rebecca Rioter, Amy Dillwyn, 1880
Erewhon, Samuel Butler, 1872
The Morgesons, Elizabeth Stoddard, 1862
Ruth Hall, Fanny Fern, 1854
Lady of the Camillias, Alexandre Dumas, fils, 1848
The Half Sisters, Geraldine Jewsbury, 1848
Sheppard Lee: Written by Himself, Robert Bird Montgomery, 1836
Domestic Manners of the Americans [reportage/memoir], Fanny Trollope, 1832
Hope Leslie, Catherine Maria Sedgewick, 1827
The Confessions of William-Henry Ireland [memoir], 1805
Adeline Mowbray, Amelia Opie, 1804
A Voyage Around My Room, Xavier de Maistre, 1794
Charlotte Temple, Susanna Haswell Rowson, 1791
Granted, these are not all world-beaters. But do they deserve to be booted into the oubliette (which has an unquenchable appetite)? Why not try one? Oh, right, you’re busy, you like hot new stuff, you’ve got a draft to finish . . . But, in the words of a counselor I once had: Do it anyway.
And finally, here’s the ending of “Oblivion”:
A New Yorker cartoon: Anguished-looking guy stretched out on the floor beside his typing table. “Help,” he’s saying, “I’ve fallen into obscurity and I can’t get up.” Writers everywhere nod ruefully. Yup, yup. When we were young, we were desperate—crazed—to get into print. What if the world never hears from us?? Later on, it’s, Wow, out of print—that sure went by fast! Later still . . . well, it’s no longer our problem. But our books will still be around, won’t they? On shelves, in the ether? They’ll have readers, won’t they? Won’t they?
The fortitude it must take to read some of these! The titles alone make the room seem fuzzy. Are you keeping an anti-short list? The titles you've read that you wouldn't force even the Donald to read (if he could read)?