Willard Huntington Wright

“ Authors are judged not so much by their literary and artistic merits as by their bourgeois virtue, their respectability and inoffensiveness. Consequently it is not even the truly great writers of Great Britain who are recommended the most highly, but those middle-class literary idols who teach moral lessons and whose purpose it is to uplift mankind. The Presbyterian complex, so evident throughout the Encyclopædia's critiques, finds in literature a fertile field for operation. ”

“ When we come to the American literary division of the Britannica however, prejudice and neglect reach their highest point. Never have I seen a better example of the contemptuous attitude of England toward American literature than the Encyclopædia's treatment of the novelists of the United States. William Dean Howells, in three-quarters-of-a-column biography, gets scant praise and is criticised with not a little condescension. ”

“ What there is in Mark Twain's biography is written by Brander Matthews and is fair as far as it goes. The one recent American novelist who is given adequate praise is Henry James; and this may be accounted for by the fact of James's adoption of England as his home. The only other adequate biography of an American author is that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. But the few biographies of other United States writers who are included in the Encyclopædia are very brief and insufficient.
In the omissions of American writers, British prejudice has overstepped all bounds of common justice. ”

“ Thomas Hardy, another one of England's important moderns, is condemned for his attitude toward women: his is a “man's point of view” and “more French than English.” (We wonder if this accounts for the fact that the sentimental James M. Barrie is accorded more space and greater praise.) Samuel Butler is another intellectual English writer who has apparently been sacrificed on the altar of Presbyterian respectability. He is given less than a column, a little more than half the space given the patriotic, tub-thumping Kipling, and less than half the space given Felicia Hemans. ”

“ Thackeray is given equal space with Balzac, and in the course of his biography it is said that some have wanted to compare him with Dickens but that such a comparison would be unprofitable. “It is better to recognize simply that the two novelists stood, each in his own way, distinctly above even their most distinguished contemporaries.” (Both Balzac and Victor Hugo were their contemporaries, and to say that Thackeray stood “distinctly above” them is to butcher French genius to make an English holiday.) ”

“ If, as is natural, one should judge the relative importance of the world's novelists by the space devoted to them, one could not escape the impression that the literary genius of the world resides almost exclusively in British writers. ”

“ In H. G. Wells's biography, which is longer than that of George Moore, “his very high place” as a novelist is spoken of; and Anthony Hope draws abundant praise in a biography almost as long as that of Turgueniev!
In the treatment of Mrs. Humphry Ward, however, we have the key to the literary attitude of the Encyclopædia. Here is an author who epitomizes that middle-class respectability which forms the Britannica's editors' standard of artistic judgment, and who represents that virtuous suburban culture which colors the Encyclopædia's art departments. ”

“ This astonishing and incompetent praise is accounted for when we discover that it was written by Swinburne who, as is generally admitted, was a better poet than critic. In fact, turning to Swinburne's biography, we find the following valuation of Swinburne as critic: “The very qualities which gave his poetry its unique charm and character were antipathetic to his success as a critic. He had very little capacity for cool and reasoned judgment, and his criticism is often a tangled thicket of prejudices and predilections. . . . Not one of his studies is satisfactory as a whole ”

“ George Meredith is accorded almost as much biographical space as Balzac; and in the article there appears such qualifying words as “seer,” “greatness,” and “master.” The impression given is that he was greater than Balzac. In Jane Porter's biography, which is longer than that of Huysmans, we read of her “picturesque power of narration.” Even of Samuel Warren, to whom three-fourths of a column is allotted (more space than is given to Bret Harte, Lafcadio Hearn, or Gorky) , it is said that the interest in Ten Thousand a Year “is made to run with a powerful current.” ”

“ And there are other important and eminent German novelists who are far more deserving of space in an international encyclopedia than many of the Englishmen who receive biographies in the Britannica — for instance, Heinz Tovote, Hermann Hesse, Ricarda Huch, Helene Bohlau, and Eduard von Keyserling — not one of whom is given biographical consideration! ”

“ Humphry Ward's, is written by a former Accountant General of the English army, and contains adverse comment because he did not idealize “the nobler elements in human nature,” although, it is said, “his later books show improvement.” Such scant treatment of Zola reveals the unfairness of extreme prejudice, for no matter what the nationality, religion, or taste of the critic, he must, in all fairness, admit that Zola is a more important and influential figure in modern letters than Mrs. ”