If you had bought one of the first copies of ‘The Idler’ when they were published in 1892, you would have found works by some big literary players inside. Not only were there works by Robert Barr and Jerome. K. Jerome themselves but also some other big nineteenth century names.
Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) contributed several pieces – a poem, a story called ‘The English Shakespeare’ and another called ‘The Memory Clearing House.’ This in the year in which Zangwill was to publish his novel ‘Children of the Ghetto. A Study of a Peculiar People’ – his vivid episodic portrayal of the immigrant Jewish community of the East End – which brought him significant success.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote an article, a year before Sherlock Holmes appeared to have plunged off the Reichenbach Falls, alive with detail, entitled ‘The Glamour of the Arctic,’ The article tells the extraordinary story of the whale fishers of Peterhead who ‘leave home at the end of February, before the first shoots are above the ground and return in September, when only the stubble remains to show where the harvest has been.’
Doyle’s brother-in-law E.W. Hornung whose literary career was already underway, contributed and later in the decade he would debut his most famous creation of the gentleman thief Raffles.
Then there was Mark Twain. ‘The Idler’ serialised Twain’s 1892 novel ‘The American Claimant’ between 1892 and 1893. The novel is known for a charming conceit – Twain’s decision to write a novel without mentioning the weather and , conveniently for the reader, placing a whole selection of weather description in an appendix for the reader’s free use. Delightful.
The Solitary Reader 