Books and Culture

Reading, for Hamilton Wright Mabie, can change the quality of a person's inner life. In these essays, he considers how close attention to literature develops judgment, feeling and imagination. Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe appear as examples of writers whose work gains fresh meaning as readers bring their own experience to it. Mabie addresses people beginning to explore books, treating their interest as the starting point for a fuller understanding of human life.

His account of culture draws a distinction between collecting information and absorbing knowledge until it becomes part of one's character. The discussion of imagination extends this idea across poetry, philosophy and scientific thought, connecting sympathy with the ability to understand another person's work. Readers interested in the purpose of literary study will find an argument for patient reading and personal reflection, with education measured by its effect on the whole person.