Reading public

“ For want of good reading, pieces published with a view to influence the minds of men, for their own or the public benefit, lose half their force. Were there but one good reader in a neighbourhood, a public orator might be heard throughout a nation with the same advantages, and have the same effect upon his audience, as if they stood within the reach of his voice. ”

“ I cogitated, as I stood at the fire, on the subject of the public in general, and found that I could divide it, like man himself, into three parts—into the Buying-public, the Reading-public, and the Art-public, just as speculative persons have assumed that man consists of Body, Soul, and Spirit. ”

“ But although to what is called the reading public these maxims are as yet, no less in fact than in metaphor, a closed book, its pages have long been a source of profit and delight to some of those who are best able to estimate their value. ”

“ And yet, how imperfect, how inadequate is the catalogue of facts I have furnished in the foregoing pages! I have said nothing of the spread of instruction by the diffusion of the arts of reading and writing, through public schools, and the consequent creation of a reading community; the modes of manufacturing public opinion by newspapers and reviews, the power of journalism, the diffusion of information public and private by the post-office and cheap mails, the individual and social advantages of newspaper advertisements. ”

“ Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents, and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of common sense daily to his readers. When, alas! shall we have a public willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone? ”

“ By this time, the class of persons who sought knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of life, who took an interest in literature, and constituted the Authors' Public, had indeed extended a little, extremely little, beyond the people of condition, the persons educated in learned institutions, and those whose professions involved some necessity, and might create some taste for reading. ”

“ But to satisfy a public which is so greedy of reading, an extraordinary number of writers is required at the present day, from the obscure editors of provincial journals to the favoured few who succeed in winning world-fame, and in reaching the position of sovereigns or, if you prefer it, satraps of literature. And all this enormous multitude of writers is compelled to write prolifically and rapidly, because the public wants to read voraciously. ”

“ In every Reading Society the books are selected by our Fraternity. 2. When we have confidential persons in every quarter, who will make it [215] their serious concern to spread such performances as promote the enlightening of mankind, and to introduce them even into every cottage. 3. When we have the loud voice of the public on our side, and since we are able, either to banish into the shade all the fanatical writings which appear in the reviews that are commonly read, or to warn the public against them ”

“ The public—that is, the reading world made up of those who love the products of authorship—always takes an interest in the methods of work adopted by literary men, and is fond of gaining information about authorship in the act, and of getting a glimpse of its favorite, the author, at work in that "sanctum sanctorum"—the study. ”

“ The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then. ”

“ The literary taste of your community is a reflection of your own as shown forth in your own institution—its collection of books, the assistants with which you have surrounded yourself, your attitude and theirs through you toward literature and toward the public. ”

“ If we want a formula or golden rule for arriving at popularity, I should propose this: Let the work have a Message. Let it have a thing to say, a story to tell, a living Man or Woman to present, a lesson to deliver, clear, strong, unmistakable.
"The demand for reading is enormous, and it increases every day. I see plainly—as plainly as eyes can see—a time—it is even now already upon us—when the popular writer—the novelist, the poet, the dramatist, the historian, the physicist, the essayist—will command such an audience—so vast an audience—as he has never yet even conceived as possible. ”

“ Now the masses of men begin to be educated, begin to think for themselves, and a host of periodicals appear in answer to their demand for reading matter. Poets, novelists, essayists, historians,—all serious writers feel the inspiration of a great audience, and their works have a thousand readers where formerly they had but one. In a word, English government, society and literature have all become more democratic. ”

“ The public must be supplied with something that it could consume in large quantities without loss of appetite. Hence the novel, the review, the periodical essay, the collection of private letters, and though last, not least, the intimate lives of notable men. ”

“ On what do you young women and young men form your individual opinion—the editorial page, or the news dispatches, or the headlines? It would be interesting to question the student body and learn how you are influenced in the forming of opinion upon political, moral and social questions that bulk large in the public mind. ”

“ The beauteous and serene beams of the star of science, are lost in the dazzling brightness of the political sun. How feeble the inducement held out in our land to the poet, the historian, or philosopher! The reading portion of our population is but a trifle, compared with the whole. We have a few mature minds, who, soaring above the common level, have taken their seats in the halls of literary eminence. Are they appreciated? Their names are unknown to a majority of the various classes of society? ”

“ The reader will be able to judge of their value himself. Students of current political literature in this country will find in these a freshness of ideas and a freedom of treatment which are so much needed just now for the formation of a sound and healthy public opinion among us. ”

“ Be not, as some of you are, 435the mere echoes of public opinion; make public opinion. Let the great roll on which you write with a man’s pen be a message of light and liberty, and kindness and an awakening of moral power. ”

“ Each section of the public has its own literary organ, and the mass of the public is without any suspicion that the value of these organs is relative to their being nearer a certain ideal centre of correct information, taste, and intelligence, or farther away from it. ”

“ You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which would include some of the important topics which concern the PUBLIC MIND, —but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass away. ”

“ The circulation of our newspapers and the records of the books in demand at our libraries, show how much a knowledge of reading means for most of our population. Popular education of this kind may, and does benefit a few, but it works harm to a great many. ”

“ If a civilisation is founded on two senses—the sense of motion and the sense of mass,—one need not go far to find the essential traits of its literature and its daily reading habit. There are two things that such a civilisation makes sure of in all its concerns—hurry and crowd. Hence the spectacle before us—the literary rush and mobs of books. ”

“ In the circulation of books we have to follow the public taste, but in these listening-rooms we have the matter more in our control. Of course we must select bright books which the people will come to hear. ”

“ But, Messieurs, the critics, do not you know that you are governed only by books? Do not you know that the statutes, the military code, and the gospel, are books on which you continually depend? Read; improve yourselves. It is reading alone that invigorates the understanding ”

“ The national literature reveals the myriad shades and hues of private and public feeling, and the more truthful this literary record, the more delicate and noble become the harmonies of local and national thought or emotion with the universal instincts and passions of mankind. ”

“ All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and honest inquiry into social questions, finds some voice in print, but—leaving aside times when public opinion is greatly aroused—those phases that are backed by wealthy interests have a great advantage in the urgency, persistence and cleverness with which they are presented. ”

“ No man, I think, with such universally important things to say on almost every social and intellectual activity of the day, was ever published in forms more ingeniously contrived to thwart the interest of the prospective public. ”

“ To compensate for this deficiency we have the sympathy with whole nations, with whole classes, with a wide circle of readers, which enables an author to electrify a public, and ensures popularity during his lifetime even to a peculiarly audacious writer occupying a peculiarly precarious position. ”

“ Nor can any lack of final verbal correction much diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human heart. ”

“ These papers are offered at so small a price as to place them within the reach of all; and in a country where every one reads, the influence of such a power as a public educator, in stimulating and diffusing mental activity, and in creating cosmopolitan interests, can scarcely be comprehended in its full significance. ”

“ But let us consider this accomplishment as detached from public business, and from its wonderful efficacy in popular assemblies, at the bar, and in the senate; can anything be more agreeable, or more endearing in private life, than elegant language? For the great characteristic of our nature, and what eminently distinguishes us from brutes, is the faculty of social conversation, the power of expressing our thoughts and sentiments by words. ”

“ For, according to this system, a book that makes any impression at all comes to be regarded as a public enemy or a public idol, according to the politics or the prejudices of the public accuser. There is no medium. ”

“ Choose, then, the events that all share in common if they are of value in giving a framework for your narrative [Pg 277] presentation, but especially choose those events that in their nature illuminate the personality and complement your analysis.
We think of events as being public. There is also the hero's private life. Often, especially with the more humble heroes, the home life is more important than the public deeds, brings out more clearly the real man than any amount of marching in the market place or discussing in the public square. ”

“ They most happily illustrate book-knowledge; but if the pupil's instructions in private do not precede, and keep pace with these useful public exhibitions, her knowledge will be only presumptuous ignorance. ”

“ Another line of work for this fourth class of good citizens would be an organized and ever-increasing vigilance in regard to the work of the city’s servants, and the creation of a strong public sentiment which shall demand a purer, cleaner press and a suppression of the vile literature which is poisoning the imagination of thousands of our youth. ”

“ Whenever a handful of books is presented to a community, addresses are made to show, on the one hand, that reading and writing are better than meat and drink, and, on the76 other, that the people who read and write are on the brink of abysmal destruction. ”

“ The kind of reading which falls into the hands of the young would be found to be a lecture topic of appalling interest. Striking illustrations for such lectures could be taken from the advertisements and statistics of story-paper and dime-novel publishers. The illustrated papers which can be bought and are bought by youth are crammed to overflowing with details of vice and barbarity. ”

“ The newspapers circulating in all classes of society, the number of persons upon whom the formation of that vague force called public opinion depends has become multiplied many times, and in it many are included who have not the previous knowledge requisite to the formation of an intelligent opinion, or capacity to form a real opinion of their own. ”

“ To marshal the available material, setting it to work in the service of social and civic ideals, is to give to literature the “central place in a new humanism.” When we organize reading in the schools with reference to the teaching of ideals—personal, social, national, and patriotic—we “put the stress on literature as one of the chief means through which the child enters on his intellectual and spiritual inheritance.” ”

“ It is only recently that our writers have begun to describe our own life as it is, and that readers begin to feel that our society may be as interesting in print as that English society which they have been all their lives accustomed to read about. The reading-books of children in schools were filled with English essays, stories, English views of life ”

“ They will skim over any amount of cheap newspapers and trashy society “weeklies” full of the unimportant movements and doings of he and she and they, but to take up a book with any serious intention of reading it thoroughly, is a task which only the thoughtful few will be found ready to undertake. ”