University of Virginia Library

PROSPECTUS
OF THE
LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS.

Fictitious composition is now admitted to form an extensive and important
portion of literature. Well-wrought novels take their rank by the
side of real narratives, and are appealed to as evidence in all questions
concerning man. In them the customs of countries, the transitions and
shades of character, and even the very peculiarities of costume and dialect,
are curiously preserved; and the imperishable spirit that surrounds
and keeps them for the use of successive generations renders the rarities
for ever fresh and green. In them human life is laid down as on a map.
The strong and vivid exhibitions of passion and of character which they
furnish, acquire and maintain the strongest hold upon the curiosity, and,
it may be added, the affections of every class of readers; for not only is
entertainment in all the various moods of tragedy and comedy provided in
their pages, but he who reads them attentively may often obtain, without
the bitterness and danger of experience, that knowledge of his fellow-creatures
which but for such aid could, in the majority of cases, be only
acquired at a period of life too late to turn it to account.

This "Library of Select Novels" will embrace none but such as have
received the impress of general approbation, or have been written by
authors of established character; and the publishers hope to receive such
encouragement from the public patronage as will enable them in the
course of time to produce a series of works of uniform appearance, and
including most of the really valuable novels and romances that have been
or shall be issued from the modern English and American press.

There is scarcely any question connected with the interests of literature
which has been more thoroughly discussed and investigated than that of
the utility or evil of novel reading. In its favour much may be and has
been said, and it must be admitted that the reasonings of those who believe
novels to be injurious, or at least useless, are not without force and
plausibility. Yet, if the arguments against novels are closely examined,
it will be found that they are more applicable in general to excessive indulgence
in the pleasures afforded by the perusal of fictitious adventures
than to the works themselves; and that the evils which can be justly
ascribed to them arise almost exclusively, not from any peculiar noxious
qualities that can be fairly attributed to novels as a species, but from those
individual works which in their class must be pronounced to be indifferent.

But even were it otherwise—were novels of every kind, the good as
well as the bad, the striking and animated not less than the puerile, indeed
liable to the charge of enfeebling or perverting the mind; and were
there no qualities in any which might render them instructive as well as
amusing—the universal acceptation which they have ever received, and
still continue to receive, from all ages and classes of men, would prove
an irresistible incentive to their production. The remonstrances of moralists
and the reasonings of philosophy have ever been, and will still be
found, unavailing against the desire to partake of an enjoyment so attractive.
Men will read novels; and therefore the utmost that wisdom and
philanthropy can do is to ester prudently for the public appetite, and, as it
is hopeless to attempt the exclusion of fictitious writings from the shelves
of the library, to see that they are encumbered with the least possible
number of such as have no other merit than that of novelty.