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Title: My Contemporaries In Fiction
Author: David Christie Murray
Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22203]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION ***
Produced by David Widger
MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION
By David Christie Murray
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1897
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTORY
MY CONTEMPORARIES IN FICTION
I.--FIRST, THE CRITICS, AND THEN A WORD ON DICKENS
II.--CHARLES READE
III.--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
IV.--LIVING MASTERS--MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE
V.--LIVING MASTERS--RUDYARD KIPLING
VI.--UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT--THOMAS HARDY
VII.--UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT--GEORGE MOORE
VIII.--MR. S. R. CROCKETT--IAN MACLAREN
IX.--DR. MACDONALD AND MR. J. M. BARRIE
X.--THE PROBLEM SEEKERS--SEA CAPTAIN AND LAND CAPTAIN
XI.--MISS MARIE CORELLI
XII.--THE AMERICANS
XIII.--THE YOUNG ROMANCERS
INTRODUCTORY
When these essays were originally printed (they appeared simultaneously
in many newspapers), I expected to make some enemies. So far, I have
been most agreeably disappointed in that regard; but I can affirm that
they have made me many friends, and that I have had encouragement
enough from fellow craftsmen, from professional critics, and from casual
readers at home, in the colonies, and the United States to bolster up
the courage of the most timorous man that ever held a pen. As a set-off
against all this, I have received one very noble and dignified rebuke
from a Contemporary in Fiction, whom the world holds in high honour,
who regrets that I am not engaged in creative work--in lieu of this--and
pleads that 'authorship should be allowed the distinction of an
exemption from rank and title.' With genuine respect I venture to
urge that this is an impossible aspiration, and in spite of the lofty
sanction which the writer's name must lend to his opinion, I have been
unable to surrender the belief that the work done in these pages is
alike honourable and useful. It is, as will be seen, in the nature of
a crusade against puffery and hysteri
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