THE BIOGRAPHY RACKET Sta,—I imagine that Cecil Howard will, with
myself, sustain Miss Jenny Nasmyth's strictures on our books with equanimity, although perhaps, in my own case, it is a little astonishing to have four years' serious study and hard work dismissed as lazy and degenerate. Be that as it may, what is of far greater importance is that a paper with the splendid literary reputation of the Spectator should publish an article which sweeps away our heritage of great biographies —such as Forster's Life of Dickens, Gaskell's Life of Charlotte BronW, Churchill's Life of Marlborough, and so forth—as 'doctored' and second-rate art. • Surely, Sir, such an article, so insulting to all serious writers and their publishers, so ill-conceived, ill-considered, and unscholarly, should never have been allowed to appear in a journal with such a great ' tradition of service to the art of literature?—Yours
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