Parnassus on Wheels traces a middle-aged woman's winsome adventures as a traveling bookseller. Its sequel, The Haunted Bookshop, unfolds in a Brooklyn store that attracts a nefarious plot as well as a budding romance.
I wanted to call these exercises Casual Ablutions, in memory of the immortal sign in the washroom of the British Museum, but my arbiter of elegance forbade it. You remember that George Gissing, homeless and penniless on London streets, used to enjoy the lavatory of the Museum Reading Room as a fountain and a shrine. But the flinty hearted trustees, finding him using the wash-stand for bath-tub and laundry, were exceeding wroth, and set up the notice these basins are for casual ablutions only I would like to issue the same warning to the implacable reader: these fugitive pieces, very casual rinsings in the great basin of letters, must not be too bitterly resented, even by their publishers. To borrow O. Henry's joke, they are more demitasso than Tasso. -- Christopher Morley
On Christmas Eve, while the Perfect Reader sits in his armchair immersed in a book -- so absorbed that he has let the fire go out -- I propose to slip gently down the chimney and leave this tribute in his stocking. It is not a personal tribute. I speak, on behalf of the whole fraternity of writers, this word of gratitude -- and envy. But the Perfect Reader, for whom all fine things are written, knows no such delicate anguish. When he reads, it is without any arrire pense, any twingeing consciousness of self. I like to think of one Perfect Reader of my acquaintance. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels Oh, the Perfect Reader The enjoyment of literature is a personal communion; it cannot be outwardly instilled. The utmost the critic can do is read the marriage service over the reader and the book. The union is consummated, if at all, in secret. . . .
Christopher Morley (May 5, 1890 - March 28, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, appeared in 1917. The protagonist, traveling bookseller Roger Mifflin, appeared again in his second novel, The Haunted Bookshop in 1919. Author of more than 100 novels, books of essays, and volumes of poetry, Morley is probably best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle, which was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. Another well-known work is Thunder on the Left (1925). In this book: The Haunted Bookshop Parnassus on Wheels Mince Pie Pipefuls Plum Pudding Chimneysmoke Where the Blue Begins Shandygaff Kathleen
Parnassus on Wheels traces a middle-aged woman's winsome adventures as a traveling bookseller. Its sequel, The Haunted Bookshop, unfolds in a Brooklyn store that attracts a nefarious plot as well as a budding romance.
Parnassus on Wheels" (1917) was Christopher Morley’s first published novel. It tells the story of Roger Mifflin, who sells his travelling book business to 39-year-old Helen McGill. The latter is tired of taking care of her ailing older brother Andrew, a businessman, farmer, and author. The novel is told from the perspective of Mrs McGill and was in part inspired by David Grayson’s novel "The Friendly Road." Morley wrote a sequel to this story called "The Haunted Bookshop." Christopher Morley (1890–1957) was an American author, poet and journalist from Pennsylvania. His father was a mathematics professor and his mother a violinist. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1900 and he later studied modern history at Oxford. After getting his degree, he moved back to America and married Helen Booth Fairchild, with whom he had four children. Morley was a prolific writer and is remembered for novels such as "Parnassus on Wheels" (1917), "The Haunted Bookshop" (1918), "Thunder on the Left" (1925), and "Kitty Foyle" (1939).
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