- Hardcover: 108 pages
- Publisher: Greenwood Press; Facsimile of 1893 ed edition (May 1971)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0837129249
- ISBN-13: 978-0837129242
- Product Dimensions: 15.5 x 11.9 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
MY answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
MY answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Pleasantly Antiquated Essay, April 30 2011
By G. Charles Steiner - Published on Amazon.com
I did not know that F. Marion Crawford was born in Italy and that after getting a good education in America, he returned to Italy and lived there till he died. Perhaps that fact of his being a "foreigner" of sorts accounts for his not "turning up" in lists of American novels of the 19th or 20th century. Yet, according to Wikipedia, Graham Greene and F. Scott Fitzgerald were aware of him and his novels, mentioning Crawford in at least one of their own respective novels.This book was first published in 1893 when Francis Marion Crawford was 39 years of age. At 108 pages, the book is one extended essay with brief breaks here or there, no chapters at all. Wikipedia summarizes the essence of the essay-long book quite well:
"The novel, he wrote, is 'a marketable commodity' and 'intellectual artistic luxury' (8, 9) that 'must amuse, indeed, but should amuse reasonably, from an intellectual point of view. . . . Its intention is to amuse and please, and certainly not to teach and preach; but in order to amuse well it must be a finely-balanced creation. . . .'."
The essay adds the idea that a novel is really just a portable play and the best novels strike at the heart. From the writing, the reader must assume that the author knows a lot about writing novels if only because he has so many opinions about them, and indeed, Francis Marion Crawford's works extend to more than 32 volumes from historical novels to mainstream novels to ghost and horror stories. Many of his novels are listed on Amazon for purchase and many more still are available for free on Gutenberg Project as well as Online Books.
This essay strives to state what, insofar as I know, only Ayn Rand definitely stated in her esthetic theory almost fifty years later: a novel is combination of realism and romanticism.
I cannot recommend this work for any particular insights into the novel; it's simply charmingly written and the words are dressed in the intellectual style of a politer society that has long since gone.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory
- Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > United States
- Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > History & Criticism
- Books > Nonfiction > Education > Language Instruction
- Books > Reference > Foreign Languages
- Books > Reference > Writing > Fiction
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
