Working Americans Research Articles

A Poem by Heart

A Poem by Heart

SOME LITERARY AND POPULAR SOURCES FOR MRS HUMPHRY WARD'S THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE

IF Henry James had counted the publication of Robert Elsmere as a public occasion, the appearance of The History of David Grieve in 1892 was no less momentous; Macmillans, at any rate, paid out E7,000 for the work's American rights. The novel was issued in three volumes, a format already archaic, and this hint of traditionalism carries through into its aesthetic conception as well. The chances offered by this expansive medium for enriching cross references and the assembling of supportive thematic material were not neglected by Mrs Ward, and two years later she published Marcella, her last three-decker work. Though David Grieve is a long novel, it treats only of the childhood and earlier manhood of its hero. As in many Victorian fictional biographies, character is felt and imagined in a cumulative manner with lines of continuity and enquiry finely judged and pointed. Adult life takes up the larger portion of the work, and here the usual strains and anomalies which arise between a man's