[Gutenberg 22525] • John Lyly

Excerpt: ...have not the ladies ever since his day been the patrons and purchasers of the novel? What would happen to the literary market to-day were our mothers, wives, and sisters to deny themselves the pleasure of fiction? The very question would send the blood from Mr Mudie's lips. The two thousand and odd novels which are published annually in this country show the existence of a large leisured class in our community, and this class is undoubtedly the feminine one. The novel, therefore, owes not only its birth, but its continued existence down to our own day, to the "ladies and gentlewomen of England"; and this dedication may be taken as a general one for all novels since Lyly's time. "Euphues," he writes, "had rather lye shut in a Ladye's casket than open in a scholar's studie," and he continues, "after dinner you may overlooke him to keepe you from sleepe, or if you be heavie, to bring you to sleepe