A Catholic librarian on acceptable fiction, c. 1930
The most complete bibliography of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglophone Catholic fiction is Stephen J. Brown, SJ's Catalogue of Novels and Tales by Catholic Writers, which went through multiple editions; I own the 4th, published in 1930. It comes as no surprise that Brown's enthusiasm for modernist fiction was (ahem) somewhat limited (rather too much "moral poison" [x]). But what did Brown think constituted a "fair nucleus" (xi) for a library's collections (xi-xii)?
The "standard or classical fiction":
- Walter Scott
- Charles Dickens
- W. M. Thackeray
- The Bronte sisters (not clear if Anne is included or not)
- Anthony Trollope
- Edward Bulwer Lytton
- George Eliot
- George Meredith
- Wilkie Collins
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
The "contemporary, or almost contemporary, writers who have so far successfully withstood the tests of time and competition":
- Bret Harte
- R. L. Stevenson
- Joseph Conrad
- H. Rider Haggard
- "Q" (i.e. Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch)
- William Black
- W. D. Blackmore
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- J. M. Barrie
- Rudyard Kipling
- George W. Cable
- Henry James
- James Lane Allen
- W. D. Howells
- Winston Churchill (the novelist, not the Prime Minister)
- John Buchan
- Kate Douglas Wiggin
- Jack London
- Booth Tarkington
He also notes some comic writers:
- Mark Twain
- Stephen Leacock
- W. W. Jacobs
- Jerome K. Jerome
- Barry Pain
- P. G. Wodehouse
- F. H. Anstey
- D. B. Wyndham Lewis (not to be confused with the other Wyndham Lewis)
These lists are always fascinating indicators of how Anglo-American fiction's canon continues to morph. Some notes:
1) Again, it's clear that by 1930 the nineteenth-century canon of "major" authors had pretty much settled down into its current form (but see below), albeit with Meredith and without Melville. Bulwer Lytton had still not dropped off into the comic abyss of the Bulwer Lytton Prize and the Little Lyttons--the interwar period was really his last hurrah--while Scott remained an author whom everyone needed to read, although by this point he was also classed primarily as a children's novelist.
2) Jane Austen's absence is striking. In general, there's an obvious shortage of women novelists here.
3) About half the late 19th/early 20th-c. contingent has disappeared. James and Conrad are thoroughly "high culture"; Doyle, Stevenson, and, to a lesser extent, Barrie, Kipling and London are still popular (although those last three primarily as children's authors). Harte continues to have some reputation for a few short stories, and both Haggard and Buchan have an audience amongst lovers of adventure and spy tales. Howells and Blackmore are pretty much the province of academics at this point, and some of the others not even that.
4) Of his comics, only Twain and Wodehouse are still read widely, although Victorianists probably know Jerome K. Jerome. Oddly enough, readers who recognize Jacobs probably do so for the horror story "The Monkey's Paw," which is most assuredly not funny.