Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1916 — Polite Literature. [ARTICLE]

Polite Literature.

When "A History of New York,” by Washington Irving, appeared in the Christmas season of 1809, it made a tremendous sensation, according to Hamilton Wright Mabie. It was greeted with a chorus of laughter or with shouts of denunciation. To satirize the Dutch families of that time was to lay an irreverent hand on the social ark; and a decade later a distinguished citizen of Dutch descent described it as a “gross carieature, 7 * whiie Scott wrote to Henry Brevoort that he had been reading it aloud to Mrs. Scott and two ladies who were guests, and “our sides have been absolutely sore with laughter." It was not a great work, but it was the beginning of what used to be called “polite literature” in this country. From the hour of its publication American books began to be read abroad, and the literary idea and atmosphere found a home in the new world.