Dreamthorp and Linlithgow

Just one hundred years ago, Alexander Smith wrote Dreamthorp, the only book of his that still is read. Though Dreamthorp often appears on lists of favorite books of book-loving people, I do not think there is a paperback edition of it anywhere. There ought to be, for it would serve well in college or high school as a model for the essay; and also there is much instructive wisdom in Dreamthorp.

As one may surmise from the title, this slim series of meditative essays centers round an ideal village, where the essayist is spending his declining years; I suppose George Gissing may have been influenced by Dreamthorp in writing his Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. But not all admirers of Dreamthorp realize that the sleepy and beautiful little town which Smith loved was not the creation of his dreaming fancy: Dreamthorp is simply a precise copy of an ancient Scottish town (though in the book it is called an English village)— Linlithgow, which Smith knew well in his day.

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Russell Kirk

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Just one hundred years ago, Alexander Smith wrote Dreamthorp, the only book of his that still is read. Though Dreamthorp often appears on lists of favorite books of book-loving people, I do not think there is a paperback edition of it anywhere. There ought to be, for it would serve well in college or high school as a model for the essay; and also there is much instructive wisdom in Dreamthorp.

As one may surmise from the title, this slim series of meditative essays centers round an ideal village, where the essayist is spending his declining years; I suppose George Gissing may have been influenced by Dreamthorp in writing his Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. But not all admirers of Dreamthorp realize that the sleepy and beautiful little town which Smith loved was not the creation of his dreaming fancy: Dreamthorp is simply a precise copy of an ancient Scottish town (though in the book it is called an English village)— Linlithgow, which Smith knew well in his day.