ABSTRACT
It was Mark Twain who defined a classic as a book no one reads but everyone thinks should be read. It is curious certainly that in any list of great books there are titles which, by reputation at least, may be said to have had an important impact on the minds of men and women, but which, when given the test of continuing use, seem not to matter at all. This is so common that a list of classic or world changing books could well be described as an indication of “the power of the unread.” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is perhaps an unfair example, but the fact remains that while it doubtless was a true “best seller” in its own day and time, today it is not even read as an historical or literary curiosity. Bellamy’s Looking Backward, by many considered a classic utopian novel, to a modern reader, even to a reader interested in the theses of social order, is a source of boredom. The complete range of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels, looked upon by any and all teachers of literature as having been cast in the classic mold, today sit proudly on every library’s shelves, untouched by most readers, unless imposed on them by some assignment in a course of high school literature. Even the giant Dickens, save for perhaps his Christmas Carol, is probably better known nowadays by the formula dramas made of his works for the moving picture screen or the television tube than by the works themselves.
