Explore "Confessions of a Book-Lover" by E. Walter Walters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. -- GOLDSMITH.
I HAVE confessed that I like to feel the heart, the humanity, of an author. How natural, then, if I desire to know something about his home-life, his family, his manner of living, his favourite means of recreation. Surely such curiosity is free from censure. Of what stuff are the fine gentlemen made who tell us that we have no business with the private affairs of our great writers? Does not our curiosity spring from respect, from admiration -- from _love_? Am I to be blamed if I desired to know how the affairs of this world went with the writer who has charmed and instructed me, who has led me into new worlds of thought and feeling? If I have learned to love an author through his books, may I not be permitted to ask whether he was happily situated? We speak glibly enough of the ‘friendship of books,' and what, pray, does that mean but the friendship of _authors_? I have still to learn that it is no part of a man's duty to take an interest in the home-life of his friends.