Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... give a considerable portion of their space to serial stories written for young people. Between good "juveniles " and good books for grown persons there is not much essential difference. Anyone who is old enough to make out the words can safely enter the large world of the English and American novel. The chances of encountering the few that are unfit for the young are slight. Ruskin in his essay " Of Queens' Gardens," which treats of the education of girls, says: "Whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not for what is out of them but for what is in them. The chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and his amiable folly degrades her." A novel in our language that has been read and freely talked of for many years is as safe as a church; and there are enough such novels to keep one happily occupied during all the hours one can give to reading fiction to the end of one's days. LIST OF FICTION Supplementary to Chapter IV The following list of novels, tales, and prose dramas is offered to the young reader by way of suggestion and not as a "prescribed" list. Like the other lists in this book it omits many masterpieces that will occur immediately to the mind of the older reader, and it includes some books that are not masterpieces. The notes, or " evaluations" as the librarians call them, are arbitrary, indicating the private opinions of the present Guide; they are sometimes extensive in the case of less important writers and are omitted in the cases of the great masters. The way to use the list is to run over it from time to time until you form a bowing acquaintance with the names...
