Literary Knighthoods
Literary Knighthoods is an article published in The Bystander on 3 september 1913.
Literary Knighthoods
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is to the fore in the matter. That is the worst of these literary knighthoods and baronetcies. Title an author and you seem to invest him with the delusion that it is his duty to become a dull publicist. I have hardly read a story by "Sir" Conan Doyle that has held me, but I have read a good many letters to the Press which have not. Sir Rider Haggard has, since his knighthood, given himself up to turnips. Then "Sir" Gilbert Parker. He used to write clever books about the Wild West. Of late he has devoted himself to sounding the depths of Tariff Reform for new dullnesses. Sir Arthur Pinero — no, his knighthood hasn't enlivened him. Sir Quiller Couch has become "Professor" Q. Still, the worst has to happen. To what heights of unintelligibility Mr. Kipling will soar when he becomes Sir Rudyard I hardly like to think.
