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William Hurrell Mallock

William Hurrell Mallock (7 February 18492 April 1923) was an English novelist and economics writer. Much of his writing is in support of the Roman Catholic Church and in opposition to positivist philosophy and socialism.

Biography

A nephew of the historian James Anthony Froude, Mallock was educated privately and then at Balliol College, Oxford. He won the Newdigate Prize in 1872 for his poem The Isthmus of Suez and took a second class in the final classical schools in 1874, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford University. He never entered a profession, though he at one time considered the diplomatic service.

He first drew wide attention with the satirical novel The New Republic (1877), conceived while he was a student at Oxford. Written as a roman à clef, it included characters recognizable as prominent figures such as Benjamin Jowett, Matthew Arnold, Violet Fane, Thomas Carlyle, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Although early critical reception was mixed, the book caused controversy, particularly for its satirical portrayal of the critic Walter Pater. Contemporary and later commentators described the depiction (as “Mr. Rose”) as deliberately cutting and suggestive of aesthetic and sexual affectation.

The appearance of The New Republic coincided with discussion of the Oxford Professorship of Poetry and is frequently cited as one factor in Pater’s decision not to stand for the post. Pater later published “A Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew,” which has sometimes been read as an indirect reply to the atmosphere of the controversy.

In subsequent decades Mallock wrote both fiction and polemical works on religion and politics. In books on religious questions he argued for dogma as the foundation of religion and rejected attempts to base religion solely on scientific claims. In Is Life Worth Living? (1879) and the satirical novel The New Paul and Virginia (1878) he attacked positivist ideas and wrote in defence of the Roman Catholic Church. (One of his uncles, Hurrell Froude, had been a founder of the Oxford Movement.)

He also contributed frequently to newspapers and magazines, including The Forum, National Review, Public Opinion, Contemporary Review, and Harper’s Weekly. His April 1889 essay opposing Thomas Huxley’s agnosticism appeared in The Fortnightly Review and was reprinted in Popular Science Monthly. The piece formed part of a broader public dispute involving Huxley and William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough.

From the 1880s onward he published a series of works on economics and social policy critical of radical and socialist theories, including Social Equality (1882), Property and Progress (1884), Labour and the Popular Welfare (1893), Classes and Masses (1896), Aristocracy and Evolution (1898), and A Critical Examination of Socialism (1908). In 1907 he visited the United States to deliver a set of lectures on socialism under the auspices of the National Civic Federation and at universities in several cities, including New York, Cambridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

Among his anti-socialist works is also the novel The Old Order Changes (1886). His other novels include A Romance of the Nineteenth Century (1881), A Human Document (1892), The Heart of Life (1895), Tristram Lacy (1899), The Veil of the Temple (1904), and An Immortal Soul (1908).

Mallock later received renewed attention from some conservative writers. Russell Kirk discussed him at length in The Conservative Mind, citing earlier critics such as George Saintsbury and John Squire on Mallock’s argumentative skill and style, while emphasizing his sustained opposition to political and moral radicalism.

He published a volume of Poems in 1880. His 1878 book Lucretius included verse translations from the Roman poet, followed by Lucretius on Life and Death (1900), a sequence of verse paraphrases influenced by the style of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; a second edition appeared in 1910.

Influence and legacy

Ironically, this last work on Lucretius came to be highly regarded by freethinkers and other religious skeptics. Corliss Lamont includes portions of the third canto in his A Humanist Funeral Service. Mallock himself, in his introduction, seems to be offering it, somewhat condescendingly, for the use of such non-Christians when he writes:<blockquote>Those, however, who... are adherents of the principles which [Lucretius] shares with the latest scientists of to-day, can hardly find the only hope which is open to them expressed by any writer with a loftier and more poignant dignity than that with which they will find it expressed by the Roman disciple of Epicurus.</blockquote>

The popular English novelist Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé) dedicated her book of essays Views and Opinions (1895) to Mallock—"To W. H. Mallock. As a slight token of personal regard and intellectual admiration."

Artist Tom Phillips used Mallock's A Human Document as the basis for his project A Humument, in which he took a copy of the novel and constructed a work of art using its pages.

Works

As editor

Articles

Translations

See also

References

Further reading

  • Adams, Amy Belle (1934). The Novels of William Hurrell Mallock. University of Maine Studies, Second Series, No. 30. Orono: University of Maine Press.
  • Bain, James Tom (1972). The Social Conservatism of W.H. Mallock. Thesis (M.A.): Tulane University.
  • Brown, Douglas P. (2004). The Formation of the Thought of a Young English Conservative: W. H. Mallock and the Contest for Cultural and Socio-Economic Authority, 1849-1884. PhD dissertation, University of Missouri.
  • Buckley, Jerome (1964). The Victorian Temper. New York: Vintage Books.
  • Burn, W. L. (1949). "English Conservatism," The Nineteenth Century, Vol. CXLV, pp.&nbsp;1–11, 67–76.
  • Coker, Francis W. (1933). "Mallock, William, H. 1849-1923." In: Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. by Edwin R.A. Seligman & Alvin Johnson, Vol. X. London: Macmillan & Co., pp.&nbsp;66–67.
  • Denisoff, Dennis (2001). "The Leering Creatures of W. H. Mallock and Vernon Lee." In: Aestheticism and Sexual Parody: 1840-1940. Cambridge University Press.
  • Douglas, Roy (2003). "Mallock and the 'Most Elaborate Answer'," The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. LXII, No. 5, pp.&nbsp;117–136.
  • Eccleshall, Robert (1990). English Conservatism Since the Restoration: An Introduction & Anthology. London: Unwin Hyman.
  • Gartner, Russell R. (1979). William Hurrell Mallock: An Intellectual Biography. PhD dissertation, City University of New York.
  • Egedy, Gergely (2004). "Conservatism versus Socialism. The late-Victorian Prophet of Inequality, Mallock," Tarsadalomkutatas (Social Science Research), Vol. XXII, No. 1, pp.&nbsp;147–161.
  • Hobson, John A. (1898). "Mr. Mallock as Political Economists," The Contemporary Review, Vol. LXXIII, pp.&nbsp;528–539.
  • Ingalls, Joshua King (1885). Social Wealth: The Sole Factors and Exact Ratios in its Acquirement and Apportionment. New York: Social Science Pub. Co.
  • Jennings, Jeremy (1991). "Masses, Démocratie et Aristocratie dans le Pensée Politique en Angleterre," Mil Neuf Cent, Vol. IX, No. 9, pp.&nbsp;99–112.
  • Jarrett-Keer, Martim (1985). "W. H. Mallock: Radical Tory, Romantic Classicist," PN Review, Vol. XI, No. 5.
  • Kearney, Anthony (2012). "W. H. Mallock's Jenkinson and Thomas Love Peacock's Jenkison; a Likely Connection," Notes and Queries, Vol. LIX, No. 3, pp.&nbsp;387–390.
  • Kirk, Russell (1982). The Portable Conservative Reader. New York: Viking Press.
  • Krueger, Christine L. (2003). "Mallock, William Hurrell, 1849-1923." In: Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: Facts on File Inc., 223–224.
  • Leon, Daniel De (1908). "Marx on Mallock," Daily People, Vol. VIII, No. 245.
  • Lucas, John (1971). "Conservatism and Revolution in the 1880s." In: Literature and Politics in the Nineteenth Century. London: Taylor & Francis, pp.&nbsp;173–219.
  • Lutzi, Pearl Antoinette (1917). The Social and Religious Ideas of W. H. Mallock. Thesis (M.A.): University of California.
  • McCandless, Amy Maureen Thompson (1970). Change and the Conservative: A Study of William Hurrell Mallock. Thesis (M.A.): University of Wisconsin-Madison.
  • Muller, Jerry Z. (1997) Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present. Princeton University Press.
  • Nickerson, Charles C. (1963). "A Bibliography of the Novels of W. H. Mallock," English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Vol. VI, No. 4, pp.&nbsp;190–198.
  • Peters, J. N. (2004). "William Hurrell Mallock." In: H.C.G. Matthew & Brian Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 36. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.&nbsp;337–338.
  • Ramos, Iolanda (2006). "Clues to Utopia in W. H. Mallock’s The New Republic," Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, No. 2, pp.&nbsp;28–41.
  • Reichert, William O. (1956). The Conservative Mind of William Hurrell Mallock, PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota.
  • Scott, Patrick G. (1971). "Mallock and Clough – A Correction," Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, pp.&nbsp;347–348.
  • Scott, T. H. S. (1897). Social Transformations of the Victorian Age. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
  • Sitwell, Osbert. Laughter in the Next Room. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company.
  • Spargo, John (1907). Modern Socialism. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company.
  • Thorne, W. H. (1893). "The Mallock Light," The Globe, Vol. IV, No. 13, August/November, pp.&nbsp;459–468.
  • Todd, Arthur James (1926). Theories of Social Progress. New York: The Macmillan Company.
  • Tucker, Albert V. (1962). "W. H. Mallock and Late Victorian Conservatism," University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, pp.&nbsp;223–241.
  • Wallace, George (1908). "Cause and Growth of Socialism." In: The Disinherited. Observations in Travel. New York: J.S. Ogilvie Publishing Company.
  • Williams, Raymond (1960). "W. H. Mallock." In: Culture & Society 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books.
  • Wilshire, Gaylord (1907). Socialism – The Mallock-Wilshire Argument. New York: Wilshire Book Co.
  • Woodring, Carl (1947). "William H. Mallock: A Neglected Wit," More Books, Vol. XII.
  • Woodring, Carl (1951). "Notes on Mallock's 'The New Republic'," Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. VI, pp.&nbsp;71–74.
  • Wolff, Robert Lee (1977). Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England. New York and London: Garland Publishing.
  • Yarker, P. M. (1955). "Voltaire Among the Positivists: A Study of W. H. Mallock's The New Paul and Virginia." In: Essays and Studies. London: John Murray.
  • Yarker, P. M. (1959). "W. H. Mallock's Other Novels," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp.&nbsp;189–205.

External links