This is a perfectly delightful little book– so delightful that I’m not even going to call it a crappy old book! It is

culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Amazon Free on Kindle, paperback $5

That infallible source’s bio of Warner is woefully abbreviated. Let’s see what we might find in some crappy old books, shall we?

But first, because this is so terrible, and because it gives me such a sense of superiority to poke fun in a better-than-thou sort of way, let us look at a single sentence from that infallible source:

In 1873, the work Warner is known for today, the novel he wrote with Mark Twain, was published.

Have you ever?

Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was an American editor, essayist, and novelist. He had been around the block as a railroad man and a lawyer before turning to editing and writing. The author of Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988) does not think too highly of Warner and his post Civil War writers ilk. But then again, that crappy old book is not so much a history as it is a criticism of everything. (Don’t wast your $51.62.)

Warner’s talents were keen observation, “quiet humor and mellow grace.” Both of the two crappy old books^1,2 I referred to likened him to Washington Irving, whose biography he wrote for The American Men of Letters series (1896; he also was an editor of that series). His first novel, The Gilded Age was co-authored with Clemens. This is the work for which he is know today, but he was exceptionally popular in his time.

You know me, I could go on but Sally may be coming.

Daily Reading

• Plumbers
• My Summer in a Garden (a series of essays he wrote as newspaper editor) Free Kindle & Audiobook. I’m listening to it and as someone who gardens, I’m sympathetic!
• How I Killed a Bear (chapter from In the Wilderness) Free Kindle. Nice biographical sketch at the Archive link.

Plumbers

“SPEAKING of the philosophical temper, there is no class of men whose society is more to be desired for this quality than that of plumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys in the business begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secret of it is that they are agreeable by the hour.”

If you need a smile or chuckle, do click and give him a read. You won’t be disappointed unless you are a scold.

Stay well. Stay Safe. Keep Reading. Stay out of Sally’s way.

¹The Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962)

²The Oxford Companion to American Literature (1941)