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A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF
ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph.D.
1920
PREFACE
The papers here gathered together represent the activities of a librarian
in directions outside the boundaries of his professional career, although
the influences of it may be detected in them here and there. Except for
those influences they have little connection and the transition of thought
and treatment from one to another may occasionally seem violent. It may,
however, serve to protect the reader from the assaults of monotony.
A.E.B.
CONTENTS
DO READERS READ?
(_The Critic_, July, 1901, p. 67-70)
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?
(_The Book Lover_, January, 1904, p. 12-16)
THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE; A STUDY OF BOOK TITLES
(_The Book Buyer_, June, 1897, p. 500-1)
SELECTIVE EDUCATION
(_Educational Review_, November, 1907, p. 365-73)
THE USES OF FICTION
Read before the American Library Association, Asheville Conference,
May 28, 1907. (_A.L.A. Bulletin_, July, 1907, p. 183-7)
THE VALUE OF ASSOCIATION
Delivered before the Library Associations of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas,
Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, October 9-18, 1907. (_Library Journal_,
January, 1908, p. 3-9)
MODERN EDUCATIONAL METHODS
(_Notes and News_, Montclair, N.J., July, 1908)
SOME ECONOMIC FEATURES OF LIBRARIES
Read at the opening of the Chestnut Hill Branch, Philadelphia Free
Library, January 22, 1909. (_Library Journal_, February, 1909, p.
48-52)
SIMON NEWCOMB: AMERICA'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMER
(_Review of Reviews_, August, 1909, p. 171-4)
THE COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS
Read before the Pacific Northwest Library Association, June, 1910.
(_P.N.W.L.A. Proceedings_, 1910, p. 8-23)
ATOMIC THEORIES OF ENERGY
Read before the St. Louis Academy of Science. (_The Monist_,
October, 1912, p. 580-5)
THE ADVERTISEMENT OF IDEAS
(_Minnesota Library Notes and News_, December, 1912, p. 190-7)
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, AND THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT
Read before the National Education Association. (_N.E.A.
Proceedings_, 1912, p. 240-5)
THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF VIOLENCE
(_St. Louis Mirror_, July 18, 1913)
THE ART OF RE-READING
HISTORY AND HEREDITY
Read before the New England Society of St. Louis. (_New England
Society of St. Louis_. _Proceedings_, 29th year, p. 13-20)
WHAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR
A Flag Day address in St. Peter's church, St. Louis. (_St. Louis
Republic_, June 15, 1914)
THE PEOPLE'S SHARE IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
Read before the Chicago Women's Club, January 6, 1915. (_Library
Journal_, April, 1915, p. 227-32)
SOME TENDENCIES OF AMERICAN THOUGHT
Read before the New York Library Association at Squirrel Inn, Haines
Falls, September 28, 1915. (_Library Journal_, November, 1915, p.
771-7)
DRUGS AND THE MAN
A Commencement address to the graduating class of the School of
Pharmacy, St. Louis, May 19, 1915. (_Journal of the American
Pharmaceutical Association_, August, 1915, p. 915-22)
HOW THE COMMUNITY EDUCATES ITSELF
Read before the American Library Association, Asbury Park, N.J.,
June 27, 1916. (_Library Journal_, August, 1916, p. 541-7)
CLUBWOMEN'S READING
(_The Bookman_, January-March, 1915, p. 515-21, 642-7, 64-70)
BOOKS FOR TIRED EYES
(_Yale Review_, January, 1917, p. 358-68)
THE MAGIC CASEMENT
Read before the Town and Gown Club, St. Louis.
A WORD TO BELIEVERS
Address at the closing section of the Church School of Religious
Instruction.
INDEX
A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF
ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
DO READERS READ?
Those who are interested in the proper use of our libraries are asking
continually, "What do readers read?" and the tables of class-percentages
in the annual reports of those institutions show that librarians are at
least making an attempt to satisfy these queries. But a question that is
still more fundamental and quite as vital is: Do readers read at all? This
is not a paradox, but a common-sense question, as the following suggestive
little incident will show. The librarian-in-charge of a crowded branch
circulating-library in New York City had occasion to talk, not long ago,
to one of her "star" borrowers, a youth who had taken out his two good
books a week regularly for nearly a year and whom she had looked upon as a
model--so much so that she had never thought it necessary to advise with
him regarding his reading. In response to a question this lad made answer
somewhat as follows: "Yes, ma'am, I'm doing pretty well with my reading. I
think I should get on nicely if I could only once manage to read a book
through; but somehow I can't seem to do it." This boy had actually taken
to his home nearly a hundred books, returning each regularly and borrowing
another, without reading to the end of a single one of them.
That this case is not isolated and abnormal, but is typical of the way in
which a large class of readers treat books, there is, as we shall see,
only too much reason to believe.
The facts are peculiarly hard to get at. At first sight there would seem
to be no way to find out whether the books that our libraries circulate
have been read through from cover to cover, or only half through, or not
at all. To be sure, each borrower might be questioned on the subject as he
returned his book, but this method, would be resented as inquisitorial,
and after all there would be no certainty that the data so gathered were
true. By counting the stamps on the library book-card or dating-slip we
can tell how many times a book has been borrowed, but this gives us no
information about whether it has or has not been read. Fortunately for our
present purpose, however, many works are published in a series of volumes,
each of which is charged separately, and an examination of the different
slips will tell us whether or not the whole work has been read through by
all those who borrowed it. If, for instance in a two-volume work each
volume has gone out twenty times, twenty borrowers either have read it
through or have stopped somewhere in the second volume, while if the first
volume is charged twenty times and the second only fourteen, it is certain
that six of those who took out the first volume did not get as far as the
second. In works of more than two volumes we can tell with still greater
accuracy at what point the reader's interest was insufficient to carry him
further.
Such an investigation has been made of all works in more than one volume
contained in seven branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, and with very
few exceptions it has been found that each successive volume in a series
has been read by fewer persons than the one immediately preceding. What is
true of books in more than one volume is presumably also true, although
perhaps in a less degree, of one-volume works, although we have no means
of showing it directly. Among the readers of every book, then, there are
generally some who, for one reason or other, do not read it to the end.
Our question, "Do readers read?" is thus answered in the negative for a
large number of cases. The supplementary question, "Why do not readers
read?" occurs at once, but an attempt to answer it would take us rather
too deeply into psychology. Whether this tendency to leave the latter part
of books unread is increasing or not we can tell only by repeating the
present investigation at intervals of a year or more. The probability is
that it is due to pure lack of interest. For some reason or other, many
persons begin to read books that fail to hold their attention. In a large
number of cases this is doubtless due to a feeling that one "ought to
read" certain books and certain classes of books. A sense of duty carries
the reader part way through his task, but he weakens before he has
finished it.
This shows how necessary it is to stimulate one's general interest in a
subject before advising him to read a book that is not itself calculated
to arouse and sustain that interest. Possibly the modern newspaper habit,
with its encouragement of slipshod reading, may play its part in producing
the general result, and doubtless a careful detailed investigation would
reveal still other partial causes, but the chief and determining cause
must be lack of interest. And it is to be feared that instead of taking
measures to arouse a permanent interest in good literature, which would in
itself lead to the reading of standard works and would sustain the reader
until he had finished his task, we have often tried to replace such an
interest by a fictitious and temporary stimulus, due to appeals to duty,
or to that vague and confused idea that one should "improve one's mind,"
unaccompanied by any definite plan of ways and means. There is no more
powerful moral motor than duty, but it loses its force when we try to
apply it to cases that lie without the province of ethics. The man who has
no permanent interest in historical literature, and who is impelled to
begin a six-volume history because he conceives it to be his "duty" to
read it, is apt to conclude, before he has finished the second volume,
that his is a case where inclination (or in this instance disinclination)
is the proper guide.
As a matter of fact, the formation of a cultivated and permanent taste for
good reading is generally a matter of lifelong education. It must be begun
when the child reads his first book. An encouraging sign for the future is
the care that is now taken in all good libraries to supervise the reading
of children and to provide for them special quarters and facilities. A
somewhat disheartening circumstance, on the other hand, is the
multiplication of annotated and abbreviated children's editions of all
sorts of works that were read by the last generation of children without
any such treatment. This kind of boned chicken may be very well for the
mental invalid, but the ordinary child prefers to separate his meat from
the "drumstick" by his own unaided effort, and there is no doubt that it
is better for him to do so.
In the following table, the average circulation of first volumes, second
volumes, etc., is given for each of seven classes of works. The falling
off from volume to volume is noticeable in each class. It is most marked
in science, and least so, as might be expected, in fiction. Yet it is
remarkable that there should be any falling off at all in fiction. The
record shows that the proportion of readers who cannot even read to the
end of a novel is relatively large. These are doubtless the good people
who speak of Dickens as "solid reading" and who regard Thackeray with as
remote an eye as they do Gibbon. For such "The Duchess" furnishes good
mental pabulum, and Miss Corelli provides flights into the loftier regions
of philosophy.
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
CLASS I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII IX. X. XI. XII.
History 10.1 6.9 4.9 4.4 4.6 4.3 2.5 2.8 1.0 0.5 1.0 3.0
Biography 7.2 5.1 3.0 2.3 1.6 1.0 1.6 1.2 1.0 2.
Travel 9.2 7.9
Literature 7.3 5.9 3.5 3.8 5.3 6.6 19.0 15.0 21.0
Arts 4.7 3.7 3.0
Sciences 5.2 2.7 1.5
Fiction 22.0 18.9 15.8 16. 26. 16.
The figures in the table, as has been stated, are averages, and the number
of cases averaged decreases rapidly as we reach the later volumes,
because, of course, the number of works that run beyond four or five
volumes is relatively small. Hence the figures for the higher volumes are
irregular. Any volume may have been withdrawn separately for reference
without any intention of reading its companions. Among the earlier volumes
such use counts for little, owing to the large number of volumes averaged,
while it may and does make the figures for the later volumes irregular.
Thus, under History the high number in the twelfth column represents
one-twelfth volume of Froude, which was taken out three times, evidently
for separate reference, as the eleventh was withdrawn but once.
Furthermore, apart from this irregularity, the figures for the later
volumes are relatively large, for a work in many volumes is apt to be a
standard, and although its use falls rapidly from start to finish enough
readers persevere to the end to make the final averages compare unduly
well with the initial ones where the high use of the same work is averaged
in with smaller use of dozens of other first and second volumes. That the
falling off from beginning to end in such long works is much more striking
than would appear from the averages alone may be seen from the following
records of separate works in numerous volumes:
VOLUMES
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
HISTORY
Grote, "Greece" 11 6 5 2 1 0 1 1 1 0
Bancroft, "United States" 22 10 6 8 10 8
Hume, "England" 24 7 5 2 1 1
Gibbon, "Rome" 38 12 7 3 4 6
Motley, "United Netherlands" 7 1 1 1
Prescott, "Ferdinand and
Isabella" 20 4 2
Carlyle, "French Revolution" 18 10 8
McCarthy, "Our Own Times" 27 8 11
BIOGRAPHY
Bourienne, "Memoirs of
Napoleon" 19 18 9 7
Longfellow's "Life" 6 4 2
Nicolay and Hay, "Lincoln" 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2
Carlyle, "Frederick the
Great" 7 3 2 2 2
FICTION
Dumas, "Vicomte de
Bragelonne" 31 30 24 22 21 16
Dumas, "Monte Cristo" 27 17 18
Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend" 5 4 1 0
Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 37 24
Of course, these could be multiplied indefinitely. They are sufficiently
interesting apart from all comment. One would hardly believe without
direct evidence that of thirty-one persons who began one of Dumas's
romances scarcely half would read it to the end, or that not one of five
persons who essayed Dickens's "Mutual Friend" would succeed in getting
through it.
Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to
ponder this table deeply. Can anyone think unmoved of those two dozen
readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual stimulant to
take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by the wayside?
A curious fact is that the tendency to attempt to "begin at the beginning"
is so strong that it sometimes extends to collected works in which there
is no sequence from volume to volume. Thus we have the following:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
Chaucer, "Poetical Works" 38 9 5
Milton, "Poetical Works" 19 8
Longfellow, "Poetical Works" 14 15 2 10 3 3
Emerson, "Essays" 48 13
Ward, "English Poets" 13 2 6
There are of course exceptions to the rule that circulation decreases
steadily from volume to volume. Here are a few:
Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.
I. II. III. IV.
Fiske, "Old Virginia" 26 24
Spears, "History of the Navy" 44 39 36 36
Andrews, "Last Quarter Century" 8 8
Kennan, "Siberia" 15 13
In the case of the two-volume works the interest-sustaining power may not
always be as great as would appear, because when the reader desires it,
two volumes are given out as one; but the stamps on the dating-slips show
that this fact counted for little in the present instances.
I would not assume that the inferences in the present article are of any
special value. The statistical facts are the thing. So far as I know, no
one has called attention to them before, and they are certainly worthy of
all interest and attention.
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?
Does the reading public read because it has a literary taste or for some
other reason? In the case of the public library, for instance, does a man
start with an overwhelming desire to read or study books and is he
impelled thereby to seek out the place where he may most easily and best
obtain them? Or is he primarily attracted to the library by some other
consideration, his love for books and reading acting only in a secondary
manner? The New York Public Library, for instance, carries on the registry
books of its circulating department nearly 400,000 names, and in the
course of a year nearly 35,000 new applications are made for the use of
its branch libraries, scattered over different parts of the city. What
brings these people to the library? This is no idle question. The number
of library users, large as it is, represents too small a fraction of our
population. If it is a good thing to provide free reading matter for our
people--and every large city in the country has committed itself to the
truth of this proposition--we should certainly try to see that what we
furnish is used by all who need it. Hence an examination into the motives
that induce people to make their first use of a free public library may
bring out information that is not only interesting but useful. To this end
several hundred regular users of the branches of the New York Public
Library were recently asked this question directly, and the answers are
tabulated and discussed below. In each of sixteen branch libraries the
persons interrogated numbered forty--ten each of men, women, boys and
girls. Thirty answers have been thrown out for irrelevancy or
defectiveness. The others are classified in the following table:
A B C D E F G H I J K L Totals
Men 6 64 10 .. .. .. 37 20 3 1 9 4 154
Boys 38 63 28 .. 4 3 9 6 5 .. .. 3 159
Women 12 67 14 4 .. .. 20 21 2 1 2 5 148
Girls 33 69 34 .. .. .. 5 3 3 .. .. 2 149
Total 89 263 86 4 4 3 71 50 13 2 11 14 610
Col. A: Sent or Told by Teacher
Col. B: Sent or Told by Friend
Col. C: Sent or Told by Relative
Col. D: Sent or Told by Clergyman
Col. E: Sent or Told by Library Assistant
Col. F: Through Reading Room
Col. G: Saw Building
Col. H: Saw Sign
Col. I: Saw Library Books
Col. J: Saw Bulletin
Col. K: Saw Article in Paper
Col. L: Sought Library
It will be seen that the vast majority of those questioned were led to the
library by some circumstance other than the simple desire to find a place
where books could be obtained. Of more than six hundred persons whose
answers are here recorded only fourteen found the library as the result of
a direct search for it prompted by a desire to read. In a majority of the
other cases, of course, perhaps in all of them, the desire to read had its
part, but this desire was awakened by hearing a mention of the library or
by seeing it or something connected with it. These determining
circumstances fall into two classes, those that worked through the ear and
those that operated through the eye.
Those who _heard_ of the library in some way numbered 449, while those who
_saw_ it or something connected with it were only 147--an interesting
fact, especially as we are told by psychologists that apprehension and
memory through sight are of a higher type than the same functions where
exercised through hearing. Probably, however, this difference was
dependent on the fact that the thing heard was in most cases a direct
injunction or a piece of advice, while the thing seen did not act with
similar urgency. There are some surprises in the table. For instance, only
four persons were sent directly to libraries by persons employed therein.
Doubtless the average library assistant wishes to get as far from "shop"
as possible in her leisure hours, but it is still disappointing to find
that those who are employed in our libraries exercise so little influence
in bringing persons to use them. The same thing is true of the influence
of reading rooms. In many of the branch libraries in New York there are
separate reading rooms to which others than card-holders in the library
are admitted, and one of the chief arguments for this has been that the
user of such a room, having become accustomed to resort to the library
building, would be apt to use the books. Apparently, however, such persons
are in the minority. No less disappointing is the slight influence of the
clergy. Only four persons report this as a determining influence and these
were all women connected with a branch which was formerly the parish
library of a New York church.
The influence of the press, too, seems to amount to little, in spite of
the fact that the newspapers in New York have freely commented on the
valuable work of the branch libraries and have called attention to it both
in the news and editorial columns whenever occasion offered. Do the
readers of library books in New York shun the public-press, or do they pay
scant heed to what they read therein?
Another somewhat noteworthy fact is that of the 449 persons who sought the
library by advice of some one, only 89 were sent by teachers. But perhaps
this is unfair. Of 265 boys and girls who thus came to the library, only
71 were sent by teachers. This is a larger percentage, but it is still not
so large as we might expect.
The difference between adults and children comes out quite strikingly in a
few instances. We should have foreseen this of course in the case of
advice by teachers, which was reported by 71 children and only 18 adults
as a reason for visiting the library. Here we should not have expected
this reason to be given by adults at all. Doubtless these were chiefly
young men and women who had used the library since their school-days. In
like manner the advice or injunction of relatives was more patent with
children than with adults, the proportion here being 62 to 24. This
probably illustrates the power of parental injunction. In another case the
difference comes out in a wholly unexpected way. Of the 71 persons who
reported that they were attracted to the library by seeing the buildings,
57 were adults and only 14 children. The same is true of those who were
led in by seeing a sign, who numbered 41 adults to only 9 children. This
seems to show either that adults are more observant or that children are
more diffident in following out an impulse of this kind. It completely
negatives the ordinary impression among librarians, at least in New York,
where it has been believed that the sight of a library building,
especially where the work going on inside is visible from the street, is a
potent attraction to the young. Some of the new branch buildings in New
York have even been planned with a special view to the exercise of this
kind of attraction.
The small number of persons who were attracted by printed matter, in
library or general publications, were entirely adults. The one instance
where age seems to exercise no particular influence is that of the advice
of friends, by which old and young alike seem to have profited.
The influence of sex does not appear clearly, although among those who
followed the injunction of relatives the women and girls are slightly in
the majority, and the four who were sent by clergymen were all women. Of
those who were attracted by the buildings 46 were male and 25 female,
which may mean that men are somewhat more observant or less diffident than
women.
A few of those questioned relate their experiences at some length. Says
one boy: "A boy friend of mine said he belonged to this library and he
found some very good books here. He asked me if I wanted to join; I said
yes. He told me I would have to get a reference. I got one, and joined
this library." Another one reports: "I saw a boy in the street and asked
him where he was going. He said he was going to the library. I asked him
what the library was and he told me; so I came up here and have been
coming ever since."
Critical judgment is shown by some of the young people. One boy says: "I
heard all the other boys saying it was a good library and that the books
were better kept than in a majority of libraries." A girl says that
friends "told her what nice books were in this library." In one case a
boy's brother "told him he could get the best books here for his needs."
The combination of man and book seems to be very attractive. One child
"saw a boy in school with a book, telling what a boy should know about
electricity; I wanted to read that book and joined the library." Others
"followed a crowd of little boys with books"; "saw children taking books
out of the building and asked them about joining"; "saw a boy carrying
books and asked if there was a library in the neighborhood." A woman "saw
a child with a library book in the park and asked her for the address of
the library." Sometimes the book alone does the work, as shown by the
following laconic report: "Found a book in the park; took it to the
library; joined it." A cause of sorrow to many librarians who have decided
ideas regarding literature for children will be the report of a boy who
exclaimed: "Horatio Alger did it!" On being asked to explain, he said that
a friend had brought one of Alger's books to his house and that he was
thereby attracted to the library.
Among those who were brought in by relatives are children who were first
carried by their mothers to the library as infants and so grew naturally
into its use. Sometimes the influence works upward instead of downward,
for several adults report that their children brought them to the library
or induced them to visit it. One man reports that he "got married and his
wife induced him to come."
Some of the reasons given are curious. A few are unconnected with the use
of books. One girl came to the library because "it was a very handy
library"; another, because she "saw it was a nice place to come to on a
rainy day." Still another frankly avows that "it was the fad among the
boys and girls of our neighborhood; we used to meet at the library." A
postman reported that he entered the library first in the line of his
duty, but was attracted by it and began to take out books. A clergyman had
his attention called to the library by requests from choir-boys that he
should sign their application blanks; afterwards thinking that he might
find books there for his own reading, he became a regular user. One user
came first to the library to see an exhibition of pictures of old New
York. A recent importation says: "When I came from Paris I found all my
cousins speaking English; 'well,' they said, 'go to the library and take
books'"--a process that doubtless did its share toward making an American
of the new arrival. In another case, the Americanizing process has not yet
reached the stage where the user's English is altogether intelligible. He
says: "Because I like to read the book. I ask the bakery lady to my
reference and I sing my neam" [sign my name?].
Here are some examples of recently acquired elegance in diction that are
almost baboo-like in their hopelessness: "Because it interest about the
countries that are far away. It gives knowledge to many of the people in
this country." "So as to obtain knowledge from them and by reading books
find out how the great men were in their former days and all about them
and the world and its people." It will be seen that the last two writers
were among those who misunderstood our questions and told why they read
books rather than how they were first led to the use of a library.
These reports are far from possessing merely a passing interest for the
curious. For the public librarian, whose wish it is to reach as large a
proportion of the public as possible, they are full of valuable hints.
They emphasize, for instance, the urgent necessity of winning the good
will of the public, and they forcibly remind us that this is of more value
in gaining a foothold for the library than columns of notices in the
papers or thousands of circulars or cards distributed in the neighborhood.
It is even more potent than a beautiful building. Attractive as this is,
its value as an influence to secure new readers is vastly less than a
reputation for hospitality and helpfulness.
In looking over the figures one rather disquieting thought cannot be kept
down. If the good will of the public is so potent in increasing the use of
the library, the ill will of the same public must be equally potent in the
opposite direction. Some of those who are satisfied with us and our work
are here put on record. How about the dissatisfied? A record of these
might be even more interesting, for it would point out weaknesses to be
strengthened and errors to be avoided--but that, as Kipling says, "is
another story."
THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE: A STUDY OF BOOK-TITLES
If there is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the
Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that
conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole
remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected
tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog"
instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly should be regarded
by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are
increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining
case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively
limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so
much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the
most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the
purely formal title and heading.
That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that
this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent
works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.
The titles were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly
Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to
March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive,
whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition "of" with
the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical relation
is slightly different, but all admit the alternative of the case-ending
"'s" or "of" followed by the objective case.
Of the 101 titles thus selected, 41 use the possessive case and 60 the
objective with the preposition. This proportion is in itself sufficiently
suggestive, but it becomes still more so by comparing it with the
corresponding proportion among a different set of titles. For this purpose
101 fiction titles were selected, just as they appeared in alphabetical
order, from a library catalogue bearing the date 1889; only those being
taken, as before, that contain a possessive. Of these 101, 71 use the
possessive case and 30 the objective with "of." In other words, where
eight years ago nearly three-quarters of such titles used the possessive
case, now only two-fifths use it, a proportionate reduction of nearly
one-half.
The change appears still more striking when we study the titles a little
more closely. Of those in the earlier series there is not one that is not
good, idiomatic English as it stands, whichever form is used; we may even
say that there is not one that would not be made less idiomatic by a
change to the alternative form. Among the recent titles, however, while
the forms using the possessive case are all better as they are, of the 60
titles that use the objective with "of" only 22 would be injured by a
change, and the reason why 8 of these are better as they are is simply
that change would destroy euphony. Among these eight are
"The Indiscretion of the Duchess,"
"The Flight of a Shadow,"
"The Secret of Narcisse," etc.,
where the more idiomatic forms,
"The Duchess's Indiscretion,"
"Narcisse's Secret,"
"A Shadow's Flight," etc.,
are certainly not euphonic.
Of the others, 8 would not be injured by a change, and no less than 30
would be improved from the standpoint of idiomatic English. It may be well
to quote these thirty titles. They are:
"The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook,"
"The Statement of Stella Maberly,"
"The Shadow of John Wallace,"
"The Banishment of Jessop Blythe,"
"The Desire of the Moth,"
"The Island of Dr. Moreau,"
"The Damnation of Theron Ware,"
"The Courtship of Morrice Buckler,"
"The Daughter of a Stoic,"
"The Lament of Dives,"
"The Heart of Princess Osra,"
"The Death of the Lion,"
"The Vengeance of James Vansittart,"
"The Wife of a Vain Man,"
"The Crime of Henry Vane,"
"The Son of Old Harry,"
"The Honour of Savelli,"
"The Life of Nancy,"
"The Story of Lawrence Garthe,"
"The Marriage of Esther,"
"The House of Martha,"
"Tales of an Engineer,"
"Love-letters of a Worldly Woman,"
"The Way of a Maid,"
"The Soul of Pierre,"
"The Day of Their Wedding,"
"The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,"
"The Hand of Ethelberta,"
"The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher,"
"The Love-affairs of an Old Maid."
Of course, in such a division as this, much must depend on individual
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