This book results from an ingenious idea, one that could only have occurred to a book-lover. Each book we read adds to the stock of memorable characters we store in our imaginations. Yet most books offer discrete worlds. Some authors introduce characters from one of their books into another one, and frequently, above all in historical fiction, real-life characters appear. But what if, Andrew Lang asked himself, characters from a Dickens novel interacted with characters from one by Thackeray that had been set in the same time and place.
It is one thing to have the idea, another to have the skill to pull it off convincingly. And in this, Lang demonstrates that he is a master stylist who can parody the most disparate voices, from the Rawlinson-inflected ancient historian Herodotus to the ludicrously vulgar Mrs. Gamp. Lang aids his project by his particular affinity for comic figures, rather than the larger-than-life heroes, although the Count of Monte Christo makes an appearance, as does Fielding’s Tom Jones, the victim of a mean prank by Richardson’s Lovelace. That prank finds its burlesque counterpart when Catherine Morland travels from Northanger Abbey to visit Mr. Rochester, where she encounters the strange governess, Jane Eyre.
Each reader will find his own favorites among these letters. I savored that the progress of the pilgrim Christian is interrupted when he comes across Izaak Walton fishing. It probably helps to have read the books from which Lang draws his characters, but I even enjoyed those drawn from books I haven’t read.
Lang defends the prevalence of comic figures in his choices in his preface, underlining the importance of humor in making a character memorable. He writes: “You cannot know Oliver Twist as you know the Dodger and Charlie Bates.”
Movies, of course, have in the last few years taken to this kind of literary mash-up, witness, for example, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But Lang came up with the idea first and carried it out well. ( )