Civilized Reader

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

It is a true truism that art imitates life. We might be struck anew by the freshness underlying this proverb if we consider the type of all imitation, the mimicry of a child. Children immediately fix on an animal’s salient characteristics then exaggerate them. Despite their best intentions, and the windows being up, adults will … Read more

The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen: A Tale of Resurrection

Just as baptism and burial are seldom associated with one another, neither are a duckling and the Resurrection. The interconnectivity of life and death, however, is paramount to any understanding of Christianity—which understanding is beautifully portrayed in a well-known tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Know you not that all we, who are baptized in Christ … Read more

All Happy Trails Lead West (II)

 Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky.  Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun.  We sprang to our feet, straining … Read more

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

In the cosmic struggle between good and evil, Shakespeare presents the relentless conflict between two philosophies that shape the human condition. The philosophy of Claudius, the usurping tyrant who secretly poisoned his brother King Hamlet and married his wife Queen Gertrude, assumes that might is right, man is a god, and the end justifies the … Read more

Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas

A book of wisdom by the most eminent man of letters and renowned moralist in the eighteenth century who valued the practical truth of literature (“The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it”), Rasselas explores the most universal of subjects, the quest for happiness. … Read more

Robert Hugh Benson’s Come Rack! Come Rope!

Robert Hugh Benson was born in 1871, the youngest son of E.W. Benson, a distinguished Anglican clergyman who counted the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, amongst his friends. In 1882, when Benson was eleven-years-old, his father became Archbishop of Canterbury. Having taken Anglican orders himself, it was Benson who read the litany at his father’s … Read more

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Be warned. As you read this, the demons are grinding the glorious creatures of folklore into distorted glorifications of the grotesque. Traditional ghosts and conventional goblins are banished—they are too suggestive of a world opposed to a world that has banished Christ. Abolished are depictions of spirits that inspire healthy mindsets with healthy goose bumps. … Read more

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

This book is not for you… unless you prepare yourself to be initiated into its mysteries through baptism—a Baptism by Beer. This is the shriving of Sherwood, the grace of the Greenwood, the ritual of Robin Hood. If you think this a sacrilege, good fellow, look to thyself. You may discover one “who so plod(s) … Read more

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

In the final chapter of the novel, “Harvesttime,” the March family gathers on an October day to celebrate a New England apple picking festival and reap the abundant fruit waiting to be picked. They have also come to celebrate Mrs.March’s sixtieth birthday and the fruits of her married love.  Her husband, three happily married daughters, … Read more

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Macbeth portrays the agony of a man’s soul in the throes of temptation as he hears the voices of the witches and the voice of Lady Macbeth luring him to commit murder to gain the power of kingship. After being addressed “Thane of Glamis” and then “Thane of Cawdor” as he rides home victorious after … Read more

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

Christmastime is the homiest holiday: firesides, feasting, family… and fairy folk. The richest Christmas traditions concern down-to-earth things; which only makes sense as they celebrate the single greatest Down-To-Earth Thing: the Word made Flesh. This is precisely why it also makes sense to find fairies, goblins, and elves as a part of Christmastide’s union of … Read more

Jane Austen’s Emma

What do matchmakers know that eludes the common man? What does the common man know that escapes the matchmakers? Austen’s novel shows that true romance originates from equality of social background and education, compatibility of temperaments, similarity of moral ideals and manners, natural attraction based on reason and feeling, and mutual admiration. Matchmaking ignores these … Read more

Walter de la Mare’s Come Hither

The late British author, Alice Thomas Ellis, is a bracing if improbable combination of Flannery O’Connor and Evelyn Waugh. Intimidated by nothing, satirically amused by most things, and weary of everything that her profound Catholic sensibilities found facile and false, Ellis wrote novels and essays that, sadly, too few now read. How fitting, then, that … Read more

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Ignorance and Want: “…no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade… has monsters half so horrible and dread.” Leave it to Mr. Dickens to capture the demons of fallen nature and fallen society without taming them. This is a single instance in a multitude why A Christmas Carol is no Hallmark affair to be … Read more

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes

George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” and he was absolutely right; but such vehement condemnation betrays the irresistability of Sherlock Holmes. In 1886, a struggling physician named Arthur Conan Doyle made a fateful decision which was intended simply to pay the bills, but which would end … Read more

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

A miser gains but never gives. A moneylender gives in order to receive. A friend gives generously and gladly but never charges interest. A lover gives without calculating the cost, takes a risk without any guarantees, and gives without any forethought of reward only to receive more than ever imagined. In Shakespeare’s play Shylock hoards … Read more

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Human problems lend themselves to many solutions, some of them with an oppressive heavy-hand and others with a gentle touch. Gravity easily oppresses and complicates problems whereas lightheartedness  simplifies the complex and applies a magical gentleness that Shakespeare compares to the play of the fairies at night that perform their favors in the silence of … Read more

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