G K Chesterton

Charles Dickens (Illustrated and Annotated) G K Chesterton

Considered merely as literary fashions, romanticism and realism are both tricks, and tricks alone. The only advantage lies with romanticism, which is a little less artificial and technical than realism. For the great majority of people here and now do naturally write romanticism, as we see it in a love- letter, or a diary, or a quarrel, and nobody on earth naturally writes realism as we see it in a description by Flaubert. But both are technical dodges and realism only the more eccentric. It is a trick to make things happen harmoniously always, and it is a trick to make them always happen discordantly. It is a trick to make a heroine, in the act of accepting a lover, suddenly aureoled by a chance burst of sunshine, and then to call it romance. But it is quite as much of a trick to make her, in the act of accepting a lover, drop her umbrella, or trip over a hassock, and then call it the bold plain realism of life. If any one wishes to satisfy himself as to how excessively little this technical realism has to do, I do not say with profound reality, but even with casual truth to life, let him make a simple experiment offered to him by the history of literature. Let him ask what is of all English books the book most full of this masterly technical realism, most full of all these arresting details, all these convincing irrelevancies, all these impedimenta of prosaic life; and then as far as truth to life is concerned he will find that it is a story about men as big as houses and men as small as dandelions, about horses with human souls and an island that flew like a balloon. This is an annotated edition with a brief biography of the author. Frederick George Kitton (5 May 1856 - 10 September 1904) was a British wood-engraver, author, and illustrator. Born at Norwich, Frederick George Kitton went at age seventeen to London as an apprentice and was trained as a draughtsman and wood-engraver by W. L. Thomas, the managing director of The Graphic and one of the leading practitioners of the technique at the time. Kitton contributed to several art periodicals, such as The Art Journal and Magazine of Art, and in 1882 began literary work. He illustrated, edited or wrote several books, most of which were related to the work of Charles Dickens. He annotated the 1900 'Rochester' edition of Dickens's work. As one of the founders of the Dickens Fellowship, Kitton compiled the catalogue of their 1903 exhibition. His Dickensian library was purchased by the Fellowship and donated to the Guildhall Library. While living at St. Albans (1888-1904), Kitton helped the Hertfordshire County Museum acquire and catalog the Sir John Evans collection. This is an annotated edition with a brief biography of the author.