The Harmsworth Library. 



THE FIRST FIFTEEN VOLUMES OF THE 

 HARMSWORTH LIBRARY ARE THESE :— 



VANITY FAIR, by W. M« THACKERAY. 



This was the novel which made Thackeray famous." One day 

 when walking out with a friend (J. T. Fields), they came to Young 

 Street, Kensington. "Down on your knees, you rogue," said 

 Thackeray, " for here Vanity Fair was penned ; and I will go down 

 with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself." 



"In 1846," says Anthony Trollope, "was commenced in 

 numbers the novel which first made his name well known to the 

 world. This was Vanity Fair, a work to which it is evident that he 

 devoted all his mind. . . . The proprietors of magazines are said to 

 have generally looked shy upon it. At last it was brought out in 

 numbers — twenty-four numbers, instead of twenty as with Dickens. 

 Each month added to the popularity of the work, and ere it was 

 concluded Thackeray took his place as one of the first of English 

 Novelists and the greatest social satirist of his age." 



IVANHOE, by SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



"The Waverley Novels," says Carlyle, "were faster written and 

 better paid for than any other books in the world. ... If Literature 

 had no task bit that of harmlessly amusing indolent, languid men, 

 here was the very perfection of literature ; that a man here more 

 emphatically than ever elsewhere, might fling himself back exclaiming, 

 ' Be mine to lie on this sofa and read everlasting Novels of Walter 

 Scott.' In general healthiness of mind these Novels prove Scott to 

 have been amongst the foremost writers." 



In writing Ivanhoe Scott desired to break new ground, to give an 

 English and not a Scotch setting to his story. In 1819 he was ill, 

 and his friend Skene, sitting by his bedside, tried to amuse him with 

 stories of Jews as he had observed them in Germany when a youth. 

 Upon the appearance of Ivanhoe he reminded Mr. Skene of this 

 conversation, and said, " You will find this book owes not a little to 

 your German reminiscences." 



