Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831)

I don't know why I read this. Or, if I have to put something down, then I read this because the power was out for 24 hours and this was the only thing I had on my tablet that I hadn't read, and when it got too dark to read by daylight that was my only remaining option. But why did I have it on my tablet? Because it's exactly the kind of book that gets talked about in an English graduate seminar. Something about how impossible it is to understand Romantic or sentimental novels without this, which is both the parody and the epitome.

At any rate, it's not the kind of book we'd now read for enjoyment. This is a quintessential syllabus-book. There's not much to recommend it beyond it's relevance to the better novels that influenced it or were influenced by it. It entered and left my consciousness at various times since I first heard of it (I don't remember when, but I know it was in a seminar room somewhere, all of which look vaguely similar in my memory now whether they were in Ottawa or Vancouver or Oxford), but I think what prompted me to find and download it in recent weeks was coming across Mary Shelley's reading list from 1815 and suddenly recalling that though this was not on that list, it was similar enough to some of the other novels to prompt me to download it before I forgot again. And I might not have got around to it at all if it weren't for the power outage.

I've gained nothing from reading this, but I'd be a goddamn liar if I said that this would stop me from mentioning it in a class discussion if I were still taking those old seminars.… (mais)