ABSTRACT
One of the surprise sensations of 1877 was W. H. Mallock’s The New Republic. Naturally, it could not compete in sales with the year’s runaway success, Black Beauty, but it nonetheless established its author as a name to be reckoned with. It was an unlikely hit, written by a man only a couple of years out of university and concerning a country house party in which the characters engage in a symposium on culture, faith, and philosophy. The appeal of the book lay in its witty and wicked satires on the leading thinkers of the day. John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, Benjamin Jowett, Walter Pater: all the sages of the age were there. Mallock mocked their attitudes and criticized their morals. He even produced strikingly effective pastiches of their work – guying everything from Matthew Arnold’s poetry to the rodomontade of Thomas Carlyle. The New Republic thus provides a wonderful introduction to the intellectual life of the Victorian world. More importantly, it illustrates some of the key issues faced by the thinkers themselves. For Mallock’s targets were cleverly chosen. They were not only amongst the most prominent intellectuals of the day; they were also people who had – often very publicly – reflected on the role of the intellectual in the nineteenth century.
