A Small Book

I finished "Letters of Askance" by Chris Morley this morning. Its mostly copies of articles he wrote for The Saturday Review of Literature back in the 30s. It makes you realize how much you don't know. There's whole generations that had more of a classical education than we because that's the way they did things back at the turn of the century (1899  vs. 1999). I've decided to keep it in my library, since I can't think of anyone to give it to that would be genuinely interested in it and it is a first edition from 1939. I wouldn't want to find it back on a thrift store shelf where it would lanquish for the next 20 years (or worse, destroyed because some Goodwill clerk decided no one was going to buy it). I did order a copy of "Dreamthorp" by Alexander Smith from Abebooks based on Morley's recommendation.(If you can't trust your friends, who can you trust?

Re:Alexander Smith (Never heard of him before)

His early poems appeared in the Glasgow Citizen, in whose editor, James Hedderwick, he found a friend. A Life Drama and other Poems (1853) was a work of promise, ran through several editions, and gained Smith the appointment of secretary to Edinburgh University in 1854.
As a poet he was one of the leading representatives of what was called the "Spasmodic" School, now fallen into oblivion. Smith, P. J. Bailey and Sydney Dobell were satirized by W. E. Aytoun in 1854 in Firmilian: a Spasmodic Tragedy.
In the same year Sydney Dobell came to Edinburgh, and an acquaintanceship at once sprang up between the two, which resulted in their collaboration in a book of War Sonnets (1855), inspired by the Crimean War. He also published City Poems (1857) and Edwin of Northumbria Edwin of Deira (1861), a Northumbrian epic poem.
Although his early work A Life Drama was highly praised, his poetry was later less well thought of and he was ridiculed as being a Spasmodic. Smith turned his attention to prose, and published Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863) and A Summer in Skye (1865). He wrote two novels, Miss Dona M'Quarrie (18??), and his last work Alfred Hagart's Household (1866) which ran first through Good Words.

I think I want to be considered part of the Spasmodic School of Poetry. I checked the book out on Google books and it looked interesting enough to try it on.

He died young.

Lately, I've been thinking about the honesty of American literature- more to come...