On this day in the year 1890, Christopher Morley was born.

From that infallible source:

He was one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. A highly gregarious man, he was the mainstay of what he dubbed the “Three Hours for Lunch Club”. Out of enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he helped found The Baker Street Irregulars^[1] and wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote an introduction to the standard omnibus edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 1936, although Morley called it an “Introduction to Yourself as a Reader of Shakespeare”.^[7] That year, he was appointed to revise and enlarge Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (11th edition in 1937 and 12th edition in 1948). He was one of the first judges for the Book of the Month Club, serving in that position until the early 1950s.

“Introduction to Yourself as a Reader of Shakespeare.” Good one.

If you are interested, The Long, Happy Life Of ‘Bartlett’s Quotations’ is a nice read.

By the eleventh edition, published in 1937, Elijah’s [previous editor] mantle had passed to the writer, poet, and editor Christopher Morley and the associate editor Louella D. Everett, a noted quotation-finder for The New York Times who had also published anthologies and was especially knowledgeable in popular light verse. Of their joint editorship, Morley wrote in his preface: “One of the pleasures of re-editing has been that one collaborator, by long experience with inquiries for the affable familiar ghosts of print, knows acutely what readers want; and the other believes himself to know what they ought to want. They have striven for a happy compromise.”

The Long, Happy Life of ‘Bartlett’s Quotations’ [my emphasis]

Daily Reading April 5

• Rhubarb

Second paragraph:

The village of Kings is tucked away in Long Island, in the Debatable Land where the generous boundary of New York City zigzags in a sporting way just to permit horse racing at Belmont Park. It is the most rustic corner of the City. To most New Yorkers it is as remote as Helgoland and as little known. It has no movie theatre, no news-stand, no cigar store, no village atheist. The railroad station, where one hundred and fifty trains a day do not stop, might well be mistaken for a Buddhist shrine, so steeped in discreet melancholy is it. The Fire Department consists of an old hose wagon first used to extinguish fires kindled by the Republicans when Rutherford B. Hayes was elected. In the weather-beaten Kings Lyceum “East Lynne” is still performed once a year. People who find Quoguc and Cohasset too exciting, move to Kings to cool off. The only way one can keep servants out there is by having the works of Harold Bell Wright in the kitchen for the cook to read.

The rest here. And oh. Do read it.

“Harold Bell Wright?” you ask.

“By Mott’s reckoning Harold Bell Wright was one of only three American authors to write five best sellers from the arrival of the pilgrims in America through the first quarter of the 20th century.” That infallible source has more.