Your Country and Books
Chapter XXXIV Reading for Your Own Country
ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ITS BRANCHES
Most of us, no matter where we may happen to live, are not far away from a newspaper office. We may walk down a village street and stop at the door of a building where a newspaper is published, or we may drive in from the farm, and see a printing press through the open door of the same office. Perhaps it is an old-fashioned printing establishment where type is still set by hand; good printing often is taken from hand-set type. Or some of you may pass, day by day, a newspaper building in a town or city where the latest machinery is constantly at work on edition after edition of a daily newspaper.
We know without being told that newspapers form one of the great channels of communication in the modern world. To learn how to read a newspaper in the best way is something we can do for our own good, for the place in which we live, for the country round about, our own country and nation, and so on in ever-widening circles.
Newspapers possess a special fascination for almost everyone. We like to look in through the windows of a newspaper building and see the machinery moving rapidly. It is exciting to watch the great sheets being folded and coming off the presses. Perhaps you know a young man or woman who is a reporter; possibly some day you will be a reporter yourself. It is worth spending time trying to understand all that a newspaper means.
If we know anything about the way in which news is gathered, written, and printed, we know that sometimes news will be inaccurate, because newspaper work is done with speed. The work of a daily newspaper is to provide its readers with the day’s news, and this must be accomplished quickly, or it will be to-morrow before we know where we are. It is the pride of a newspaper to publish correct news, as far as that is possible. But when we read a newspaper we must make allowance for the fact that some of the news is an estimate of what happened, rather than a statement of the absolutely true details of what has happened. Yet it is astonishing, considering all the circumstances, how few mistakes there are in newspapers.
We read newspapers to be well informed; to know how to relate ourselves to the life about us; and to find out what has happened that particularly concerns us in many different ways, as, for instance, in sports and games, schools and education, business and employment, about our neighbours and companions, politics and public affairs, even the hobbies in which we are interested, flower shows, cattle shows, sales of stamps, puzzles, jokes, wireless news, discoveries, inventions, explorations. By reading a good newspaper in the right way we keep in touch with current history.
There are other periodical publications, besides daily newspapers, weeklies and many monthly magazines, each of which has its own use and purpose. Some of these publications we may need to read, according to what our interests are. These you can choose for yourselves, as you grow older.
What is known as literature, writing of permanent value and beauty, not technical or scientific, but of general interest, as a rule finds its way into books. The time has come now when we can consider for a moment how many different literatures there are in the world.
Some writers belonging to literatures of countries other than our own, by this time you can name for yourselves. You know that there was a great Greek literature, a Latin literature, and Hebrew literature. The first name that comes into your minds belonging to Greek literature is Homer. Virgil was one of the great writers of Latin literature. The Bible is Hebrew literature. Dante’s work is found in Italian literature; Cervantes’ in Spanish literature; Goethe’s in German literature; Dumas’ work and Victor Hugo’s and the work of a number of other writers belong to French literature. There are famous Russian novelists. Hans Andersen was a Dane. Maeterlinck is a Belgian. The Arabian Nights, in origins at least, takes us to countries as far away as China, India, Persia, and Egypt. All these literatures come into our lives and into the lives of other people, and so we understand how famous books help to bind the world together.
English literature is one of the great literatures of the world. If it pleases us to do so, we can count that it begins in the times of the Anglo-Saxons. Even if we take Chaucer as the first great name in English literature, this means that for six hundred years, famous, glorious books in poetry, story, drama, history, and other styles of composition, have been produced at intervals, but in an unbroken succession, in the literature which we can call our own.
English literature, as you know, includes the work of English, Scottish and Irish writers. If we think of English literature as a tree, one of its branches, which comes from the same root, is American literature. Other branches of this tree are the literatures of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the work of writers in India who publish their books in the English language, known as Anglo-Indian literature. As you know, all these literatures, with the exception of American literature, belong to the nations of the British Empire. Kipling was thinking of the nations of the Empire when he called one of his books The Five Nations.
Some day you may find out for yourselves how many names you can remember of writers belonging to English literature, then any you know belonging to the branch literatures of Canada, Australia, South Africa and Anglo-India, and to American literature.
There are few lists in the world as splendid as the long roll of great writers in English literature. It is worth while learning the most famous names by heart. Numbers of these writers you know already. Many people find the greatest enjoyment they have from books in English literature.
The names of some of the most distinguished American writers are Emerson, Thoreau, Mark Twain, Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Fenimore Cooper, Longfellow, Parkman, Motley, and Washington Irving; many critics would add the name of Emily Dickinson. There are a number of interesting books in which you can read of American literature. A librarian will help you to choose one of them.
Names belonging to Australian and New Zealand literature are Henry Kingsley, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Kendall, Domett, Rolf Boldrewood, Lawson, Stephens, Louis Becke, Browne, Collins, Farjeon, Ada Cambridge, and Mrs. Campbell Praed. Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand and the lady sometimes known as “Elizabeth”, Countess Russell, in Australia. You may find in a library articles on the writers of Australia and New Zealand. Someone might read aloud to you from an anthology of Australian verse.
South Africa has not had long to establish a literature. One well-known South African name is that of Olive Schreiner. Others are Pringle, Bell, Mrs. Millin, and a young poet, Roy Campbell. A collection of English South African poetry is called The Treasury of South African Poetry and Verse.
Many Canadians have written poetry and verse in which are true descriptions of nature and the spirit of nature in Canada. Some Canadian poets’ names you will have learned already: Roberts, Carman, Lampman, Campbell, Scott, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Marjorie Pickthall, W. H. Drummond, whose habitant poems abound in humour and the delineation of character, two poets who served in the War, John McCrae and Bernard Trotter, Wilson MacDonald, and E. J. Pratt, a native of Newfoundland, the oldest dominion in the Empire. Other names you will find mentioned in several good anthologies. Haliburton was a humorist. The most widely read Canadian humorist of the present day is Mr. Stephen Leacock. Joseph Howe was a writer, an orator and statesman. The Golden Dog, by William Kirby, is a famous Canadian novel. Other novel writers are Miss Lily Dougall, Mrs. Cotes, Miss Mazo de la Roche, Sir Gilbert Parker, “Ralph Connor”, Norman Duncan, Miss L. M. Montgomery. A number of writers of Canadian fiction are doing work to-day which may become eminent. There are writers in French Canada, both of prose and poetry. Canadian historians, English and French, have accomplished good work. The two series, Makers of Canada and Chronicles of Canada, contain histories which are well worth reading.
Here is a list of readings from Canadian literature, chapters from a few novels, poems from books of poetry, short stories, two fairy tales, two speeches by Canadian statesmen, a short history. These may guide you to books which you may enjoy. In addition, we should read William Kirby’s novel, The Golden Dog. It is interesting to remember that Miss Pauline Johnson, whose poetical gift was undoubted, was a Canadian Mohawk Indian.
“How Rabbit Deceived Fox” and “Sparrow’s Search for the Rain”, from Canadian Fairy Tales, by Cyrus Macmillan.
Beautiful Joe, by Marshall Saunders.
“In the Big Haycart” and “Calling the Cows”, from Chez Nous, by Adjutor Rivard, translated by W. H. Blake.
“The Freedom of the Black-Faced Ram” from The Watchers of the Trails, by C. G. D. Roberts.
“Privilege of the Limits” from Old Man Savarin Stories, by E. W. Thomson.
“The Scarlet Hunter”, from Pierre and His People; and When Valmond Came to Pontiac, by Sir Gilbert Parker.
Chapter One, from The Imperialist, by Mrs. Cotes.
“Aunt Thankful and Her Room”, from Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Vol. II, Chap. 4, by Thomas Chandler Haliburton.
“The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias”, from Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, by Stephen Leacock.
“O Love Builds on the Azure Sea”, from Malcolm’s Katie, by Isabella Valancy Crawford.
“Where the Cattle Come to Drink” and “The Potato Harvest”, from Songs of the Common Day, by C. G. D. Roberts.
“The Frogs” and “Why Do You Call the Poet Lonely?” from The Poems of Archibald Lampman.
“How One Winter Came in the Lake Region” and “How Spring Came”, from Lake Lyrics, by W. W. Campbell.
“The Ships of St. John” and “The Grave Tree”, from Poems, by Bliss Carman.
“Heart of Gold” and “Madame Tarte”, from Later Poems and New Villanelles, by S. Frances Harrison.
“Elizabeth Speaks”, and “A Legend of Christ’s Nativity”, from Lundy’s Lane and Other Poems, by Duncan Campbell Scott.
“The Habitant”, “Little Bateese”, “De Bell of Saint Michel”, and “Little Lac Grenier”, from The Poetical Works of W. H. Drummond.
“The Song My Paddle Sings”, from Flint and Feather, by E. Pauline Johnson.
“Bega”, “The Immortal”, “The Shepherd Boy”, from The Complete Poems of Marjorie L. C. Pickthall.