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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