Monday, January 25, 2016

 

A Misobiblist

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Studies in Classic American Literature, chapter 7 ("Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter"):
My father hated books, hated the sight of anyone reading or writing.
Cf. Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Bleak House, chapter XXI:
"Don't you read, or get read to?"

The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!"
The word misobiblist (hater of books) doesn't occur in the Oxford English Dictionary. Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948) used it in The Fear of Books (1932; rpt. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), p. 4.

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# posted by Michael Gilleland @ 2:32 AM


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