Among Famous Books — Themes and Context

A Thread Through Three Eras

Kelman structures his book as a series of ten lectures grouped into three historical clusters: classical (Greek gods, Marius the Epicurean), sixteenth century (the two Fausts, Celtic revivals, Bunyan, Pepys), and modern (Sartor Resartus, pagan reactions, Chesterton, The Hound of Heaven). He argues that human nature does not greatly change, so the similarities across periods are more striking than the contrasts. This tripartite movement allows him to juxtapose figures as different as Bunyan and Pepys under the same thematic lens. The preface warns that without such a thread, a lecture series 'tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity.' The result is a work that reads less like a critical anthology and more like a sustained argument about the spiritual tensions underlying literary expression.

Recurring Images of the Flesh and Spirit

Throughout the excerpts, Kelman returns to a set of recurring images: the battle between flesh and spirit, the contrast between town and village (paganism's etymology), and the idea of a 'living' book that revitalises buried years. In the lecture on Pepys, he describes the Diary as 'among the most living of all the gifts of the past to the present,' and calls Pepys himself 'the liveliest of our English crickets on the hearth.' The image of a cricket—small, domestic, chirping—contrasts sharply with the 'mighty feast of English literature' where Milton and Bunyan sit at the high table, while Pepys is 'under the table, a mischievous and yet observant child.' This spatial metaphor (high table vs. under the table) recurs in Kelman's habit of positioning authors in a moral or spiritual hierarchy, with the 'pagan' tendency often associated with the low, the earthly, the childlike.

Movement Between the Public and the Private

Kelman's analysis of Pepys highlights a structural pattern that appears across the book: the movement between public affairs and intimate confession. Pepys is both 'a great man and a great statesman' and a writer who records his hat falling through a hole with the same fidelity as a war with Holland. Kelman notes that the Diary covers nine and a half years, from January 1660 to May 1669, and that it lay 'dead and silent' for nearly a century and a half before being deciphered. This tension between hidden and revealed, between the secret cipher and the public record, mirrors the larger theme of paganism versus idealism: the material, private self versus the spiritual, public ideal. Kelman's own lectures move between these registers, discussing both the lofty spiritual aspirations of Bunyan and the 'inordinate personal vanity' of Pepys.

The Ethics of Reading Secret Lives

Kelman devotes notable attention to the morality of publishing Pepys's diary, a work the author guarded with a cipher. He raises the question of whether Pepys intended posterity to read it, calling that wish 'evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind,' and suggests it was written 'for the luxury of reading it to himself.' Yet he also acknowledges the diary's power to 'revitalise buried years.' This ethical ambivalence—between the desire to know and the respect for privacy—echoes the book's central conflict: the pull of the material, earthly record versus the ideal of restraint. Kelman does not resolve the tension, but lets it stand as part of the 'amazing omnium gatherum' that is the diary itself. The reader is left to consider how much of another's inner life we are entitled to, and whether the 'living' quality of such a document justifies its exposure.

Kelman's lectures reward readers who enjoy watching a critic work through a consistent thesis across disparate texts. The book's structure—three periods, ten lectures, one theme—invites comparison between authors rarely placed side by side. Readers may find the most value in tracing how the same images of battle, concealment, and revelation appear in discussions of Greek gods, Puritan allegory, and modern poetry. The excerpts suggest a work more concerned with moral and spiritual categories than with literary technique, but one that remains alert to the concrete details that make a book 'living.'

Kelman’s lectures on old struggles between light and shadow made me think of quieter afternoons spent with another voice from that era—one that lingers over forgotten books rather than grand myths. There’s a tenderness in both, a sense of losing something precious. I found a similar gentle ache in A happy half-century, and other essays — Background and Themes, almost like meeting an old friend who remembers the same evenings.