STANDARD NOVELS.
rity of the agency. No one, however, can deny that until within the last twenty or thirty years, the great masters of fiction have been, if not immoral in their aim, exceedingly impure in their details; so much so, indeed, as to render it impossible that a considerate parent should present their works to his children.
The Standard Novels are not liable to this charge. The Proprietors may confidently assert that a body of popular fictions are now, for the first time, printed in one series, which are not only equal in talent to those in other collections, but, being written in accordance with morality and decorum, present just and interesting pictures of life in all its aspects, without involving the slightest danger of contaminating the minds of their readers.
The Stories already published in "The Standard Novels" consist of "The Pilot," "The Spy," and "The Last of the Mohicans," by Cooper, the admirable historical novelist of America; "Caleb Williams" and "St. Leon," by the English sage, Godwin; Miss Jane Porter's "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "Scottish Chiefs;" Mrs. Shelley's romance of "Frankenstein;" Schiller's "Ghost-Seer;" and Brockden Brown's "Edgar Huntly, or the Sleep Walker." Any of these might safely and with profit be perused by the young, for whom they are well adapted as cheap and acceptable Christmas Presents, and New-Year's Gifts.
The Authors of the Volumes already published, have been induced to revise their works, and to write notes and new introductions expressly for this series. Among the fictions immediately forthcoming in "The Standard Novels," the Proprietors may particularly mention "The Canterbury Tales," by Sophia and Harriet Lee; a new translation of Madame de Stael's "Corinne," Miss Hamilton's Cottagers of Glenburnie," more of the National Tales of Cooper, &c. &c.
New Burlington Street,
Jan. I, 1832.
