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Père Goriot

Le Père Goriot (, "Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot") is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot, a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac.

Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–1835, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel. It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext.

The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought profound changes to French society; the struggle by individuals to secure a higher social status is a major theme in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions.

The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression "Rastignac", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation.

Historical background
The novel draws on several historical events that shook the French social order in short succession: the French Revolution, which led to the First Republic; Napoleon's rise, the fall and the return of the House of Bourbon. Le Père Goriot begins in June 1819, four years after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and the Bourbon Restoration. It depicts the mounting tension between the aristocracy, which had returned with King Louis XVIII, and the bourgeoisie produced by the Industrial Revolution. In this period, France saw a tightening of social structures, with a lower class burdened with overwhelming poverty. By one estimate, almost three-quarters of Parisians did not make the 500–600 francs a year necessary for a minimal standard of living. At the same time, this upheaval made possible a social mobility unthinkable during the Ancien Régime. Individuals willing to adapt to the rules of this new society could sometimes ascend into its upper echelons from modest backgrounds, much to the distaste of the established wealthy class.

Literary background
When Balzac began writing Le Père Goriot in 1834, he had written several dozen books, including a stream of pseudonymously published potboiler novels. In 1829 he published Les Chouans, the first novel to which he signed his own name; this was followed by Louis Lambert (1832), Le Colonel Chabert (1832), and La Peau de chagrin (1831). Around this time, Balzac began organizing his work into a sequence of novels that he eventually called La Comédie humaine, divided into sections representing various aspects of life in France during the early 19th century.

One of these aspects which fascinated Balzac was the life of crime. In the winter of 1828–29, a French grifter-turned-policeman named Eugène François Vidocq published a pair of sensationalized memoirs recounting his criminal exploits. Balzac met Vidocq in April 1834, and used him as a model for a character named Vautrin he was planning for an upcoming novel.

Writing and publication
In the summer of 1834 Balzac began to work on a tragic story about a father who is rejected by his daughters. His journal records several undated lines about the plot: "Subject of Old Goriot – A good man – middle-class lodging-house – 600 fr. income – having stripped himself bare for his daughters who both have 50,000 fr. income – dying like a dog." He wrote the first draft of Le Père Goriot in forty autumn days; it was published as a serial in the Revue de Paris between December and February. It was released as a stand-alone volume in March 1835 by Edmond Werdet, who also published the second edition in May. A revised third edition was published in 1839 by Charpentier. As was his custom, Balzac made copious notes and changes on proofs he received from publishers, so that the later editions of his novels were often significantly different from the earliest. In the case of Le Père Goriot, he changed a number of the characters into persons from other novels he had written, and added new passages.

In the first book edition, the novel was divided into seven chapters:

 * In the first volume:
 * Une Pension bourgeoise (A Bourgeois Boarding House);
 * Les Deux Visites (The Two Visits);
 * L'Entrée dans le Monde (The Entrance into the World);
 * In the second volume:
 * L'Entrée dans le Monde (Suite) [The Entrance into the World (Continuation)];
 * Trompe-la-Mort (Cheat-the-Death, Death-Dodger, or Dare-Devil);
 * Les Deux Filles (The Two Daughters);
 * La Mort du Père (The Father's Death).

The character Eugène de Rastignac had appeared as an old man in Balzac's earlier philosophical fantasy novel La Peau de chagrin. While writing the first draft of Le Père Goriot, Balzac named the character "Massiac", but he decided to use the same character from La Peau de chagrin. Other characters were changed in a similar fashion. It was his first structured use of recurring characters, a practice whose depth and rigor came to characterize his novels.

In 1843 Balzac placed Le Père Goriot in the section of La Comédie humaine entitled "Scènes de la vie parisienne" ("Scenes of life in Paris"). Quickly thereafter, he reclassified it – due to its intense focus on the private lives of its characters – as one of the "Scènes de la vie privée" ("Scenes of private life"). These categories and the novels in them were his attempt to create a body of work "depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity of its turmoil". Although he had prepared only a small predecessor for La Comédie humaine, entitled Études de Mœurs, at this time, Balzac carefully considered each work's place in the project and frequently rearranged its structure.

Plot summary
The novel opens with an extended description of the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève covered with vines, owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. The residents include the law student Eugène de Rastignac, a mysterious agitator named Vautrin, and an elderly retired vermicelli-maker named Jean-Joachim Goriot. The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters.

Rastignac, who moved to Paris from the south of France, becomes attracted to the upper class. He has difficulty fitting in, but is tutored by his cousin, Madame de Beauséant, in the ways of high society. Rastignac endears himself to one of Goriot's daughters, Delphine, after extracting money from his own already-poor family. Vautrin, meanwhile, tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, whose family fortune is blocked only by her brother. He offers to clear the way for Rastignac by having the brother killed in a duel.

Rastignac refuses to go along with the plot, balking at the idea of having someone killed to acquire his wealth, but he takes note of Vautrin's machinations. This is a lesson in the harsh realities of high society. Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be a master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort (Daredevil, literally Cheat-the-Death or Death-Dodger). Vautrin arranges for a friend to kill Victorine's brother, in the meantime, and is captured by the police.

Goriot, supportive of Rastignac's interest in his daughter and furious with her husband's tyrannical control over her, finds himself unable to help. When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts, the old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke.

Delphine does not visit Goriot as he lies on his deathbed, and Anastasie arrives too late, only once he has lost consciousness. Before dying, Goriot rages about their disrespect toward him. His funeral is attended only by Rastignac, a medical student named Bianchon, a servant named Christophe, and two paid mourners. Goriot's daughters, rather than being present at the funeral, send their empty coaches, each bearing their families' respective coat of arms. After the short ceremony, Rastignac turns to face Paris as the lights of evening begin to appear. He sets out to dine with Delphine, and declares to the city: "À nous deux, maintenant!" ("It's between you and me now!")

Style
Balzac's style in Le Père Goriot is influenced by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper and Scottish writer Walter Scott. In Cooper's representations of Native Americans, Balzac saw a human barbarism that survived through attempts at civilization. In a preface to the second edition in 1835, Balzac wrote that the title character Goriot – who made his fortune selling vermicelli during a time of widespread hunger – was an "Illinois of the flour trade" and a "Huron of the grain market". Vautrin refers to Paris as "a forest of the New World where twenty varieties of savage tribes clash" – another sign of Cooper's influence.

Scott was also a profound influence on Balzac, particularly in his use of real historical events as the backdrop for his novels. Although history is not central to Le Père Goriot, the post-Napoleonic era serves as an important setting, and Balzac's use of meticulous detail reflects the influence of Scott. In his 1842 introduction to La Comédie humaine, Balzac praises Scott as a "modern troubadour" who "vivified [literature] with the spirit of the past". At the same time, Balzac accused the Scottish writer of romanticizing history, and tried to distinguish his own work with a more balanced view of human nature.

Although the novel is often referred to as "a mystery", it is not an example of whodunit or detective fiction. Instead, the central puzzles are the origins of suffering and the motivations of unusual behavior. Characters appear in fragments, with brief scenes providing small clues about their identity. Vautrin, for example, slips in and out of the story – offering advice to Rastignac, ridiculing Goriot, bribing the housekeeper Christophe to let him in after hours – before he is revealed as a master criminal. This pattern of people moving in and out of view mirrors Balzac's use of characters throughout La Comédie humaine.

Le Père Goriot is also recognized as a bildungsroman, wherein a naive young person matures while learning the ways of the world. Rastignac is tutored by Vautrin, Madame de Beauséant, Goriot, and others about the truth of Parisian society and the coldly dispassionate and brutally realistic strategies required for social success. As an everyman, he is initially repulsed by the gruesome realities beneath society's gilded surfaces; eventually, however, he embraces them. Setting aside his original goal of mastering the law, he pursues money and women as instruments for social climbing. In some ways this mirrors Balzac's own social education, reflecting the distaste he acquired for the law after studying it for three years.

Recurring characters
Le Père Goriot, especially in its revised form, marks an important early instance of Balzac's trademark use of recurring characters: persons from earlier novels appear in later works, usually during significantly different times of life. Pleased with the effect he achieved with the return of Rastignac, Balzac included 23 characters in the first edition of Le Père Goriot that would recur in later works; during his revisions for later editions the number increased to 48. Although Balzac had used this technique before, the characters had always reappeared in minor roles, as nearly identical versions of the same people. Rastignac's appearance shows, for the first time in Balzac's fiction, a novel-length backstory that illuminates and develops a returning character.

Balzac experimented with this method throughout the thirty years he worked on La Comédie humaine. It enabled a depth of characterization that went beyond simple narration or dialogue. "When the characters reappear", notes the critic Samuel Rogers, "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from the privacy of their own lives which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see." Although the complexity of these characters' lives inevitably led Balzac to make errors of chronology and consistency, the mistakes are considered minor in the overall scope of the project. Readers are more often troubled by the sheer number of people in Balzac's world, and feel deprived of important context for the characters. Detective novelist Arthur Conan Doyle said that he never tried to read Balzac, because he "did not know where to begin".

This pattern of character reuse had repercussions for the plot of Le Père Goriot. Baron de Nucingen's reappearance in La Maison Nucingen (1837) reveals that his wife's love affair with Rastignac was planned and coordinated by the baron himself. This new detail sheds considerable light on the actions of all three characters within the pages of Le Père Goriot, complementing the evolution of their stories in the later novel.

Realism
Balzac uses meticulous, abundant detail to describe the Maison Vauquer, its inhabitants, and the world around them; this technique gave rise to his title as the father of the realist novel. The details focus mostly on the penury of the residents of the Maison Vauquer. Much less intricate are the descriptions of wealthier homes; Madame de Beauséant's rooms are given scant attention, and the Nucingen family lives in a house sketched in the briefest detail.

At the start of the novel, Balzac declares (in English): "All is true". Although the characters and situations are fictions, the details employed – and their reflection of the realities of life in Paris at the time – faithfully render the world of the Maison Vauquer. The rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève (where the house is located) presents "a grim look about the houses, a suggestion of a jail about those high garden walls". The interiors of the house are painstakingly described, from the shabby sitting room ("Nothing can be more depressing") to the coverings on the walls depicting a feast ("papers that a little suburban tavern would have disdained") – an ironic decoration in a house known for its wretched food. Balzac owed the former detail to the expertise of his friend Hyacinthe de Latouche, who was trained in the practice of hanging wallpaper. The house is even defined by its repulsive smell, unique to the poor boardinghouse.

Social stratification
One of the main themes in Le Père Goriot is the quest to understand and ascend society's strata. The Charter of 1814 granted by King Louis XVIII had established a "legal country" which allowed only a small group of the nation's most wealthy men to vote. Thus, Rastignac's drive to achieve social status is evidence not only of his personal ambition but also of his desire to participate in the body politic. As with Scott's characters, Rastignac epitomizes, in his words and actions, the Zeitgeist in which he lives.

Through his characters and narration, Balzac lays bare the social Darwinism of this society. In one particularly blunt speech, Madame de Beauséant tells Rastignac: "The more cold-blooded your calculations, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly; you will be feared. Men and women for you must be nothing more than post-horses; take a fresh relay, and leave the last to drop by the roadside; in this way you will reach the goal of your ambition. You will be nothing here, you see, unless a woman interests herself in you; and she must be young and wealthy, and a woman of the world. Yet, if you have a heart, lock it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take the victim's place. And if ever you should love, never let your secret escape you!"

This attitude is further explored by Vautrin, who tells Rastignac: "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been discovered, because it was properly executed." This sentence has been frequently – and somewhat inaccurately – paraphrased as: "Behind every great fortune is a great crime."

Influence of Paris
The novel's representations of social stratification are specific to Paris, perhaps the most densely populated city in Europe at the time. Traveling only a few blocks – as Rastignac does continually – takes the reader into vastly different worlds, distinguished by their architecture and reflecting the class of their inhabitants. Paris in the post-Napoleonic era was split into distinct neighborhoods. Three of these are featured prominently in Le Père Goriot: the aristocratic area of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the newly upscale quarter of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and the run-down area on the eastern slope of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.

These quartiers of the city serve as microcosms which Rastignac seeks to master; Vautrin, meanwhile, operates in stealth, moving among them undetected. Rastignac, as the naive young man from the country, seeks in these worlds a new home. Paris offers him a chance to abandon his far-away family and remake himself in the city's ruthless image. His urban exodus is like that of many people who moved into the French capital, doubling its population between 1800 and 1830. The texture of the novel is thus inextricably linked to the city in which it is set; "Paris", explains critic Peter Brooks, "is the looming presence that gives the novel its particular tone".

It is said that in Le Père Goriot, Paris becomes a character in the same way the city did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and London becomes in Charles Dickens' works. This is evident in Balzac's portrayal of the Parisian society as mercilessly stratified, corrupt, amoral, and money-obsessed. In addition, the protagonists living in its quarters were presented in perfect harmony with their environment.

Corruption
Rastignac, Vautrin, and Goriot represent individuals corrupted by their desires. In his thirst for advancement, Rastignac has been compared to Faust, with Vautrin as Mephistopheles. Critic Pierre Barbéris calls Vautrin's lecture to Rastignac "one of the great moments of the Comédie humaine, and no doubt of all world literature". France's social upheaval provides Vautrin with a playground for an ideology based solely on personal advancement; he encourages Rastignac to follow suit.

Still, it is the larger social structure that finally overwhelms Rastignac's soul – Vautrin merely explains the methods and causes. Although he rejects Vautrin's offer of murder, Rastignac succumbs to the principles of brutality upon which high society is built. By the end of the novel, he tells Bianchon: "I'm in Hell, and I have no choice but to stay there."

While Rastignac desires wealth and social status, Goriot longs only for the love of his daughters: a longing that borders on idolatry. Because he represents bourgeois wealth acquired through trade – and not aristocratic primitive accumulation – his daughters are happy to take his money, but will see him only in private. Even as he is dying in extreme poverty, at the end of the book, he sells his few remaining possessions to provide for his daughters so that they might look splendid at a ball.

Family relations
The relations between family members follow two patterns: the bonds of marriage serve mostly as Machiavellian means to financial ends, while the obligations of the older generation to the young take the form of sacrifice and deprivation. Delphine is trapped in a loveless marriage to Baron de Nucingen, a money-savvy banker. He is aware of her extramarital affairs, and uses them as a means to extort money from her. Anastasie, meanwhile, is married to the comte de Restaud, who cares less about the illegitimate children she has than the jewels she sells to provide for her lover – who is conning her in a scheme that Rastignac has heard was popular in Paris. This depiction of marriage as a tool of power reflects the harsh reality of the unstable social structures of the time.

Parents, meanwhile, give endlessly to their children; Goriot sacrifices everything for his daughters. Balzac refers to him in the novel as the "Christ of paternity" for his constant suffering on behalf of his children. That they abandon him, lost in their pursuit of social status, only adds to his misery. The end of the book contrasts Goriot's deathbed moments with a festive ball hosted by Madame de Beauséant – attended by his daughters, as well as Rastignac – suggesting a fundamental schism between society and the family.

The betrayal of Goriot's daughters is often compared to that of the characters in Shakespeare's King Lear; Balzac was even accused of plagiarism when the novel was first published. Discussing these similarities, critic George Saintsbury claims that Goriot's daughters are "as surely murderesses of their father as [Lear's daughters] Goneril and Regan". As Herbert J. Hunt points out in Balzac's Comédie humaine, however, Goriot's tale is in some ways more tragic, since "he has a Regan and a Goneril, but no Cordelia".

The narrative of Goriot's painful relations with his children has also been interpreted as a tragicomic parable of Louis XVI's decline. At a crucial moment of filial sentiment in Balzac's novel, Vautrin breaks in singing "O Richard, O mon roi"—the royalist anthem that precipitated the October Days of 1789 and the eventual downfall of Louis XVI—a connection that would have been powerful to Balzac's readers in the 1830s. An ill-founded faith in paternal legitimacy follows both Goriot and Louis XVI into the grave.

Rastignac's family, off-stage, also sacrifices extensively for him. Convinced that he cannot achieve a decent status in Paris without a considerable display of wealth, he writes to his family and asks them to send him money: "Sell some of your old jewelry, my kind mother; I will give you other jewels very soon." They do send him the money he requests, and – although it is not described directly in the novel – endure significant hardship for themselves as a result. His family, absent while he is in Paris, becomes even more distant despite this sacrifice. Although Goriot and Vautrin offer themselves as father figures to him, by the end of the novel they are gone and he is alone.

Reception and legacy
Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's essential novel. Its influence on French literature has been considerable, as shown by novelist Félicien Marceau's remark: "We are all children of Le Père Goriot." Brooks refers to its "perfection of form, its economy of means and ends". Martin Kanes, meanwhile, in his book Le Pére Goriot: Anatomy of a Troubled World, calls it "the keystone of the Comédie humaine". It is the central text of Anthony Pugh's voluminous study Balzac's Recurring Characters, and entire chapters have been written about the detail of the Maison Vauquer. Because it has become such an important novel for the study of French literature, Le Père Goriot has been translated many times into many languages. Thus, says Balzac biographer Graham Robb, "Goriot is one of the novels of La Comédie humaine that can safely be read in English for what it is."

Initial reviews of the book were mixed. Some reviewers accused Balzac of plagiarism or of overwhelming the reader with detail and painting a simplistic picture of Parisian high society. Others attacked the questionable morals of the characters, implying that Balzac was guilty of legitimizing their opinions. He was condemned for not including more individuals of honorable intent in the book. Balzac responded with disdain; in the second preface of 1835, he wrote with regard to Goriot: "Poor man! His daughters refused to recognize him because he had lost his fortune; now the critics have rejected him with the excuse that he was immoral."

Many critics of the time, though, were positive: a review in Le Journal des femmes proclaimed that Balzac's eye "penetrates everywhere, like a cunning serpent, to probe women's most intimate secrets". Another review, in La Revue du théâtre, praised his "admirable technique of details". The many reviews, positive and negative, were evidence of the book's popularity and success. One publisher's critique dismissed Balzac as a " writer", although it predicted for him "a brief career, but a glorious and enviable one".

Balzac himself was extremely proud of the work, declaring even before the final installment was published: "Le Père Goriot is a raging success; my fiercest enemies have had to bend the knee. I have triumphed over everything, over friends as well as the envious." As was his custom, he revised the novel between editions; compared to other novels, however, Le Père Goriot remained largely unchanged from its initial version.

According to the editor of the Norton Critical Edition, Peter Brooks, the book is now seen as "the most endurably popular of Balzac's myriad works" and a "classic of the 19th-century European novel", somewhat ironically in light of the reviews and Balzac's reputation in his own time.

In the years following its release, the novel was often adapted for the stage. Two theatrical productions in 1835 – several months after the book's publication – sustained its popularity and increased the public's regard for Balzac. In the 20th century, a number of film versions were produced, including adaptations directed by Travers Vale (1915), Jacques de Baroncelli (1922), and Paddy Russell (1968). The name of Rastignac, meanwhile, has become an iconic sobriquet in the French language; a "Rastignac" is synonymous with a person willing to climb the social ladder at any cost.

Another well known line of this book by Balzac is when Vautrin tells Eugene, "In that case I will make you an offer that no one would decline." This has been reworked by Mario Puzo in the novel The Godfather (1969) and its film adaptation (1972); "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse". It was ranked as the second most significant cinematic quote in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005) by the American Film Institute.

title: Père Goriot


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Edmond Malone

Edmond Malone (4 October 1741 – 25 May 1812) was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.

Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he frequented literary and artistic circles. He regularly visited Samuel Johnson and was of great assistance to James Boswell in revising and proofreading his Life, four of the later editions of which he annotated. He was friendly with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and sat for a portrait now in the National Portrait Gallery.

He was one of Reynolds' executors, and published a posthumous collection of his works (1798) with a memoir. Horace Walpole, Edmund Burke, George Canning, Oliver Goldsmith, Lord Charlemont, and, at first, George Steevens, were among Malone's friends. Encouraged by Charlemont and Steevens, he devoted himself to the study of Shakespearean chronology, and the results of his "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written" (1778), which finally made it conceivable to try to patch together a biography of Shakespeare through the plays themselves, are still largely accepted.

This was followed in 1780 by two supplementary volumes to Steevens's version of Dr Johnson's Shakespeare, partly consisting of observations on the history of the Elizabethan stage, and of the text of doubtful plays; and this again, in 1783, by an appendix volume. His refusal to alter some of his notes to Isaac Reed's edition of 1785, which disagreed with Steevens's, resulted in a quarrel with the latter. Malone was also a central figure in the refutation of the claim that the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries were authentic works of the playwright, which many contemporary academics had believed.

Birth and early life
Edmond Malone was born 4 October 1741 in Dublin to Edmond Malone Sr. (1704–1774)—MP of the Irish House of Commons and judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland—and Catherine Collier, the niece of Robert Knight, 1st Earl of Catherlough. He had two sisters, Henrietta and Catherine, and an older brother, Richard (later Lord Sunderlin). Edmond Malone Sr. was a successful lawyer and politician, educated at Oxford University and the Inner Temple in London, and called to the Bar in England in 1730, where he had a legal practice. But in 1740, a year before Edmond Jr. was born, his practice in England failed and he returned to Ireland. He took up residence with his wife on the family's country estate, Shinglas, in County Westmeath, and began a more successful legal practice there.

According to Peter Martin, Malone's main biographer in the 20th century: "Virtually nothing is known of his childhood and adolescence except that in 1747 he was sent to Dr. Ford's preparatory school in Molesworth Street, Dublin, where his brother Richard had already been enrolled for two years". The next record of his education is 10 years later, in 1757, when he—not yet 16 years old—entered Trinity College Dublin, where his brother went to study two years earlier and where his father had received an honorary LL.D. the year before. Malone excelled at his studies, "an exemplary student, naturally diligent, consistently at the top of his class", and was awarded with books stamped with the College Arms. In the very first examination, of four in the academic year, he shared top honours with James Drought and John Kearney, who later became Fellows of the college.

As an undergraduate he wrote some poetry and literary history. Of the latter, a noteworthy example is a prose translation of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles with annotations and explanatory notes that Martin describes as "surprisingly erudite". The translation is accompanied by a twenty-page “… Essay on the Origin and Progress of Tragedy & on the Office & Advantages of the Antient Chorus" where he provides a brief comparison of Sophocles and Euripides and argues in favour of the restoration of the Chorus in modern drama.

His studies were interrupted when, in the summer of 1759, he and his father accompanied his mother to Highgate in England. Catherine's health had been deteriorating for some time and she now had increasing difficulty walking. After a short stay in Highgate she moved to the Roman Baths at Bath in Somerset, where the waters were supposed to have health-giving properties. Malone and his father returned to Ireland in October, too late to resume the winter term, so he elected to stay at Shinglas until the new year and study on his own. Not wishing to leave his father solitary, he nearly did not return to Trinity, but eventually resumed his studies in January 1760. The expenses for Catherine's stay at Bath put a strain on the family finances, but it was alleviated somewhat when, after a special examination on 2 June, he won a scholarship at Trinity and became a Scholar of the House.

Malone's final examination at Trinity was in the Michaelmas term in 1761, and he received his BA degree at the following Commencement on 23 February 1762. As only one of three, he achieved the top mark (valde bene). The decision to study law was an obvious choice: his father, uncle, and grandfather had all been Irish Barristers. He'd received—on payment of £3 6s 8d—admittance to the Inner Temple in London in 1761, but did not begin his law studies until the new year in 1763. The interval was spent in Dublin reading, and he quickly applied to become a Reader of the Trinity College Library. Martin speculates that he spent his time reading "possibly law although probably also literature".

Law school and legal practice
Malone probably entered the Inner Temple in January 1763, but few records survive of his studies there; except that he was "invited to come to the bench table" in the commons—an honour Peter Martin describes as comparable to becoming a Warden in a guild—on 10 May 1763. Outside schoolwork he published satirical articles about the government and on the abuse of the English language, and made corrections to the text in his copy of a new edition of Jonathan Swift's correspondence. He was admitted to the Inner Temple the same year as James Boswell—a coincidence Martin thinks "literary historians cannot fail to wonder at"—but there is nothing to indicate that they ever crossed paths there.

More significantly, in 1764, Malone's close friend Thomas Southwell and his father Edmund introduced Malone to Samuel Johnson, whose quarters on Inner Temple Lane were close to his own lodgings. Martin describes it as “…the most important meeting of Malone's life" and he became an "…ardent follower of Johnson's and, Boswell excepted, the most enthusiastic defender and celebrator of Johnson's writings and life." Malone's friendship with Johnson lasted until the latter's death in 1784. Although Malone failed to write down his conversations with Johnson, and none of his letters on the subject to John Chetwood have been found, Martin speculates that Shakespeare must have been among their topics of conversation, as Johnson was just then finishing up his great edition of Shakespeare that he had begun in 1756. They would have found other common interests in the law and Ireland, as Johnson would soon start work as private secretary to the English statesman and Irish politician William Gerard Hamilton. For Hamilton he compiled notes on the Corn Laws that Malone in 1809 would publish, along with two of Hamilton's speeches in the Irish House of Commons and some other miscellaneous works, under the title Parliamentary Logick.

The Southwells were also his companions when, in the autumn of 1766, he travelled in the south of France. There he visited Paris, Avignon, and Marseille; socialising and relaxing. Around this time he began having doubts about his choice of the law as a career. He was finished at the Inner Temple, but still required further study for the Irish Bar, and his motivation was flagging; particularly since it would mean leaving London and its "coffee-shops, theaters, newspapers, and politics." There was also some tension between him and his father over this, and over a judgeship his father had been promised by Lord Worthington. On hearing that the judgeship might not come to pass, Malone wrote to his father: "It shall be a lesson to me, never to believe in any great man's word, unless coupled with performance, & to aspire by every truest means at the greatest blessing of life, independence." Both issues resolved themselves shortly however, as his father succeeded to the bench as Judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas while Malone was still in Marseille. Arriving back in London, without the Southwells, in February he announced his fresh determination to proceed with law: "It is my firm resolution to apply as closely as possible till I go to Ireland, to the study of law, & the practice of the Court of Chancery…"

He was called to the Irish bar in 1767, and from 1769 practised law on the Munster circuit with "indifferent rewards". He was not having great success in this field, and he missed London with its "…great literary world of Johnson, coffee-houses, theatre, newspapers, and politics." In the early months of 1769 he also had an intense, but ultimately fruitless, romance with Susanna Spencer. When the relationship failed—for reasons that are unknown but which Martin speculates were related to their families' relative social status—Malone suffered a "nervous collapse" and "[lost] the will to read, to join in family activities, to practice law." He spent the better part of the summer in Spa with his brother, while his sisters, by letter, suggested remedies for his low mood and attempted to cheer him up. He returned some time after September, but his depression lingered on. He worked the Munster circuit and at some point after March in 1772 visited London, perhaps on the suggestion of his exasperated father. How long he remained or what his activities were is not known. He returned to Ireland and the Munster circuit, but, in private letters, complained of his boredom with this occupation.

Literature, theatre, and politics
To relieve his boredom, Malone diverted himself with literary studies. On a visit with Dr. Thomas Wilson, Senior Fellow of Trinity College, in 1774 he discovered several papers by Alexander Pope that Henry St John, the poet's literary executor, had collected. Among them was a manuscript in Pope's handwriting of his unfinished poem One Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty. Malone transcribed a facsimile of the manuscript, including "interlineations, corrections, alterations", but he failed to publish it and the original manuscript has since been lost.

On 4 April 1774, the Irish-born author Oliver Goldsmith died. Malone had known Goldsmith, either in Dublin or in London in the 1760s, and to honour his friend he participated in an amateur production of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773). The event was held on 27 September 1774 and had strong patriotic overtones: it was staged at the country seat of Sir Hercules Langrishe—a member of the Irish House of Commons—at Knocktopher, and the Irish politicians and patriots Henry Grattan and Henry Flood both played parts. According to Martin's description, "Malone played two parts and wrote an excessively long epilogue of eighty-two lines, with several allusions that suggest his literary tastes. […] It celebrates Shakespeare, touches on Irish politics […], and concludes with a panegyric on the stage […]".

Irish politics seems to have been especially on his mind in this period. In 1772 he contributed to Baratariana, a volume principally by Langrishe, but supplemented with letters by Flood and Grattan. The letters attack the current government in the style of Junius, who had published similar letters in England between 1769 and 1772, and Malone may have contributed "a weakly ironic piece in which he lamented the Irish consumption of millions of eggs every year when a little restraint could yield more substantial food in the form of chickens." His father died unexpectedly on 22 March 1774, leaving the four siblings with a modest income, and Malone free to pursue interests outside the drudgery of his legal practice. His ambition was politics, and that summer he proposed himself as candidate to a seat in Parliament for Trinity College. Objections were raised that his uncle, Anthony Malone, had joined the Townshend government whose autocratic policies the university was firmly against. In his speech to the electors, Malone defended his uncle as a man of principle rather than party, who sought to do his best for his constituents rather than gain advantage for himself and his friends: "no man perhaps ever supported the administration so disinterestedly, or got so few favours from Government either for himself or his connexions." To the charge that the filial association was an impediment to his nomination he protested, later in his speech:

"… I will go to the bottom of this objection, and will take it for granted that those who have thrown it out mean to insinuate that I was a dependant on another, and therefore not a proper object of your choice. And if this were the case, I would readily allow the force of the objection, and yield up all pretentions to your favour. But, gentlemen, this is as false as the rest; for a few months ago I obtained, at too high a price indeed, an honourable independence; nor shall any motive upon earth induce me to forfeit that independence."

Corruption and self-interest he saw as the great problem of men in elected office, and in his speech he attacked them as opposing reform for fear of losing their advantage:

"… a lord-lieutenant of the kingdom is besieged by men … who, in addition to great present emolument, grasp at future and numerous reversions; who, not content with the highest offices in their own line, invade the offices of other men, thrust themselves into every department, civil, military, and ecclesiastical …; who accumulate place upon place, and sinecure upon sinecure; who are so eager to obtain the wages of the day before the day is well passed over their heads, that they have emphatically and not improperly been styled ready-money voters; … men who are resolved … to aggrandize themselves, and care not how soon they subvert the constitution of their country if they can but erect the fabric of their own fortunes on its ruins."

He won the nomination, but the election was not until May 1776, and, a few days prior, Anthony Malone died, leaving Malone an annual income of £1,000 (roughly equivalent to £0 today) and the entire estate at Baronston to his brother, Richard. The legacy left him free to pursue a life of scholarship, and he promptly gave up the nomination in favour of contributing to a new edition of Goldsmith that was being prepared. He travelled to London to interview the people who had known Goldsmith and collect information and anecdotes about him. He spent six months there but apart from a letter from Susanna Spencer, in reply to a letter from Malone that is now lost, we have no information about his activities there. In February 1777, suffering from his first bout of rheumatism, he returned to Ireland, and shortly afterward, Poems and Plays by Oliver Goldsmith was published. Malone had contributed an eight-page memoir of Goldsmith and annotations to the poems and plays. The memoir was based on "Authentic Anecdotes" by Richard Glover—published in The Universal Magazine in May 1774, and Edmund Burke included it in The Annual Register for that year—as well as first-hand information from Dr. Wilson at Trinity.

London and Shakespeare
While in London to do research for his memoir of Goldsmith in 1776, Malone sought out George Steevens, who, by then the inheritor, from Samuel Johnson, of the editor's mantle for the Jacob Tonson edition of Shakespeare's collected works, was then busy preparing a second edition. Steevens invited Malone to help him complete it. To help him get started, Steevens lent Malone his copy of An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691) by Gerard Langbaine, into which Steevens had transcribed notes by William Oldys in addition to the notes he had added himself. When Malone returned to Ireland in early 1777, he set about transcribing all the annotations into his own copy. He finished the transcription on 30 March, and on 1 May he left Ireland for good.

Malone moved into a house in Sunninghill, about 42 km outside London, and started work. In the following months he sent a steady stream of notes and corrections to Steevens and in January 1778 The Plays of William Shakspeare was published in 10 volumes. Malone's main contribution appeared in the first volume as "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written". The "Attempt" was well received and garnered him more attention than the notes and corrections he had supplied Steevens with. With his first major contribution to Shakespeare studies published, he left Sunninghill to reside in London; first, briefly, in Marylebone Street and then in a house he rented at 55 Queen Anne Street East in what is now Foley Street in Marylebone.

In late 1778 he visited Ireland for a few months, and in February 1779, shortly after he returned, he began to have his portrait painted by Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds was then much sought after as a portrait painter, and a "face and shoulders" by Reynolds cost 35 guineas (£36.75). His uncle, Anthony Malone, had had his portrait painted by Reynolds in 1774, and Malone himself had good company: during the ten times between 23 February and 10 July that he sat for the portrait, Reynolds's appointment book shows that he sat on the same date as Edward Gibbon, the British historian and MP; George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough; Hester Thrale, author of Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson and a close friend of Johnson; and (28 April and 17 May) George III, then king of England and Ireland. Malone befriended Reynolds and they remained close friends until the latter's death in 1792, when Reynolds named Malone his executor along with Edmund Burke and Philip Metcalfe.

Malone's next scholarly project was an addendum to the Johnson–Steevens Shakespeare. Pleased with Malone's contributions to the edition, Steevens invited him to publish the apocryphal plays that had been included in the second edition of the Third Folio published by Philip Chetwinde in 1664. It was Malone's project—and with only grudging acceptance from Steevens he expanded the work to include the narrative poems and the Sonnets—but he and Steevens worked closely together, and solicited notes from Isaac Reed, William Blackstone, and Thomas Percy. Until this point their relationship had been a cordial and productive one—Steevens having given Malone his first opportunity as an editor of Shakespeare, and in return having benefitted greatly from the younger scholar's work—but while working on the addendum they had a falling-out. Steevens brought up Susanna Spencer and suggested that Malone's work on Shakespeare was a mere device to keep his mind distracted from the unhappy relationship. Malone took umbrage at this, his ambition being a life of professional scholarship, and replied that, to the contrary, he intended to produce a completely new edition of Shakespeare, "more scientifically and methodically edited than the Johnson–Steevens edition was ever likely to become." They settled their differences, but Steevens was now beginning to feel his position as the foremost editor of Shakespeare threatened. Malone was aggressive and arrogant, and his constant stream of corrections grated on the older editor. Despite the strained relationship, in late April 1780, A Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare, Published in 1778 by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens was published in two volumes. The work met with generally positive reviews, particularly from The Gentleman's Magazine and Monthly Review. But there was also criticism from the St. James's Chronicle, in which Steevens had a financial interest, that Martin describes as consisting of "anonymous and trifling notes […] which niggled at minor points, textual and factual", which were probably written by Steevens or at his behest.

Social rise and "The Club"
When Malone first arrived in England in 1777 he already had a connection to Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, and, through his boyhood friend Robert Jephson, to James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont. Johnson, of course, was among the most esteemed men of letters, and Steevens was then the foremost commentator on Shakespeare and the current inheritor of the editor's mantle for the Tonson editions; but Charlemont also had the connections to introduce Malone to a wide variety of the eminent men of the day. With these recommendations and the fame garnered by his scholarly work he was by the early 1780s often to be found in the company of the greatest literary and theatrical minds of the era. He dined regularly with Johnson, Steevens, Reed, Reynolds, Richard Farmer, Horace Walpole, John Nichols, and John Henderson. But by this time Johnson's advancing age and ill health prevented his socialising as much as in earlier years, and Malone did not often enough get a chance to spend time with him or people like Edmund Burke, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon, Charles Burney, Joseph Banks, William Windham, Charles James Fox, or John Wilkes.

At the same time, membership in "The Club"—founded by Johnson and Reynolds in 1764, and whose membership included several of those people whom Malone longed to see—had become a much sought-after honour. Malone dearly wanted to get in, but even though he had the support of Charlemont and Reynolds, he was thwarted by circumstances. The Club was founded specifically to be exclusive, and to that end limited the number of members, at that time to 35 at any given time. Since members very rarely left, the only openings came when a member died; and after the latest member, David Garrick, had died in 1779, the members resolved to keep his spot open in honour of the great actor and theatre manager. Votes were taken on several occasions, but the candidates were always blackballed.

It was not until 5 February 1782 that "[…] the memory of Garrick having dimmed sufficiently, Malone at last was admitted into this august company […]". He attended his first meeting on 19 February 1782 and quickly became one of The Club's most enthusiastic supporters and, as its treasurer, held the only permanent office associated with it. His motivation for wanting to join The Club was partly to see Johnson more often, but Johnson's health was deteriorating and no longer attended the club's dinners regularly. The first one he attended after Malone was accepted was on 2 April 1782, and in the period until Johnson's death on 13 December 1784, they saw each other at the club only five times; the last time on 22 June 1784, when Johnson "was in obvious pain and had to drag himself to get there." Johnson was also too ill to visit Malone, but he appreciated company at his house at Bolt Court, and Malone visited frequently. He kept notes on their conversations that Boswell later included in his The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), and the letter to Malone from John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington is the best account that survives of Johnson's last hours.

Chatterton forgeries
In 1769, the poet Thomas Chatterton, only 17 years old, sent Horace Walpole the first of a series of poems supposedly written by a 15th-century monk named Thomas Rowley but really written by Chatterton himself. Other poems followed, and Walpole was briefly taken in but later reconsidered. When Chatterton committed suicide the following year, there were rumours that Walpole's treatment of the young man had played a part. Despite Walpole's scepticism, in 1777, shortly after Edmond Malone's arrival in London, Thomas Tyrwhitt published Chatterton's forgeries as Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley and Others, in the Fifteenth Century. This created a great controversy, with much debate about their authenticity. For the third edition in 1778 he added an appendix arguing against the poems' antiquity, and Thomas Warton, in his The History of English Poetry (1778), devoted an entire chapter to it. Those favouring the authenticity of the Rowley poems responded in late 1781 when, just days apart, Jacob Bryant, a classical scholar, published Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley; in Which the Authenticity of Those Poems is Ascertained, and Jeremiah Milles, Dean of Exeter and President of the Society of Antiquaries of London, published Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, in the Fifteenth Century, by Thomas Rowley, Priest, &c.; With a Commentary in Which the Antiquity of Them Is Considered and Defended.

The controversy was a perfect match for Malone: steeped in ancient and early modern English literature, by trade a lawyer, and with no patience for literary forgeries or those who entertained them. As Martin puts it he "entered the fray" in December 1781 by "[sending] an anonymous 'brat into the world'" The "brat" was an article in two parts in The Gentleman's Magazine, signed "Misopiclerus". The essay met with success, and by February he published a second edition as Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley. In the essay he compares the Rowley poems to poetry by actual writers of the era; shows Chatterton's sources to have been later writers like Shakespeare, Pope, and Dryden; picks holes in the arguments put forward by Chatterton's supporters; and ends on an awkward attempt to ridicule Bryant and Milles.

"I do humbly recommend, that … the friends of the reverend antiquarian … and the learned mythologist … may, as soon as possible, convey the said [gentlemen] to the room over the north porch of Redcliffe church, … that in order to wean these gentlemen by degrees from the delusion under which they labour, and to furnish them with some amusement, they may be supplied with proper instruments to measure the length, breadth, and depth, of the empty chests now in the said room, and thereby to ascertain how many thousand diminutive pieces of parchment, all eight inches and a half by four and a half, might have been contained in those chests; (according to my calculation, 1,464,578;—but I cannot pretend to be exact:)."

Collections

Before he died, Malone detailed what should be done with his library in his will: "I request my said brother [Lord Sunderlin] will not permit my collection of books which I estimate to be worth two thousand pounds to be sold or disposed of	but preserve them or at least such of them as he is not already possessed of as an addition to his own library and with respect to the great collection of antient English Poetry and Plays contained therein which comprises almost all the original Editions of Shakespeare’s Works and is perhaps the most curious valuable and extensive collection of that kind ever assembled I recommend that he should for the sake of preserving it entire either bequeath it as an heir Loom to go with the Baronston Estate or to the Library of the College of Dublin where we were both bred but it is not my intention or meaning hereby to create any implied trust, but to leave the whole and every part of my library freely and absolutely at his disposal."

In 1815 Lord Sunderlin announced his intention to donate part of his late brother's library to the Bodleian once the new edition of Malone's Shakespeare (the Variorum Shakespeare) was complete. He reserved c. 800 volumes for the Library, while the rest was sold in 1818 at Sotheby's. In 1821 the collection was received by the Bodleian.

The early editions of Shakespeare in the collection were described by Malone in 1801: "This Collection of Shakespeare's Plays and Poems in seven Quarto volumes.. .forms perhaps the most complete Assemblage of the early editions of his productions that has ever been made. It wants only the Hamlet of 1604, King Richard II. 1597, King Henry IV. Part I. 1598, and Venus and Adonis, 4to 1593, to make it complete; and of those three plays it contains very early copies, carefully collated with those original editions; and of the fourth piece [the Venus and Adonis of 1593] no copy was ever seen by any of the Collectors of these precious rarities, or is now known to exist, though I have no doubt that at some future time it will be discovered." The influence of the Malone collection from its 1821 receipt in the Bodleian is shown by both the donations to and purchases of the Library in the years following: in 1833 Thomas Caldecott donated his poems of Shakespeare, and at the Heber sale in 1834, and afterward, further gaps in the collection were filled. In 1835 B. H. Bright gave Malone's copy of Anthony Wood's Athenae to the Bodleian, in 1836 the Bodleian bought papers relating to Pope, as well as, in 1838, collections for the last edition of Malone's Shakespeare and for the illustration of ancient manners, 76 volumes of eighteenth-century pamphlets, and part of his literary correspondence. In 1851 Malone's letters from Thomas Percy were acquired, in 1858 his Oxford research notes, in 1864 letters from Samuel Johnson, Mrs Siddons, and others, and in 1878 further correspondence, papers, and books. The mention of this purchase in the Athenaeum encouraged Mr. L. Sharpe of the Guildhall Library to present the Bodleian with Malone's letters to his grandfather. In 1881, 76 volumes of pamphlets was also purchased by the Library.

Most of Malone's books are bound with 'E. M.' in an 'interlaced monogram' on the back, with a few featuring a book-plate with his coat-of-arms on.

Works

 * 1778 – "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written", in The Plays of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes, Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, eds. (1778), 2nd ed., vol I, pp. 269–346.
 * 1780 – Supplement to Johnson and Steevens's edition of Shakespeare's Plays.
 * 1782 – Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley
 * 1787 – A Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI.
 * 1790 – The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare.
 * 1792 – A Letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer; Relative to the Edition of Shakspeare, published in MDCCXC, and some late criticisms on that work. (This is the date of the 2nd edition.)
 * 1796 – An inquiry into the authenticity of certain miscellaneous papers and legal instruments published 24 Dec MDCCXCV and attributed to Shakspeare, Queen Elizabeth and Henry, Earl of Southampton.
 * 1800 – The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, Now First Collected: With Notes and Illustrations; an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author Grounded on Original and Authentick Documents. Four volumes.
 * 1801 – The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight.
 * 1809 – Parliamentary Logick, the writings of William Gerard Hamilton with notes on the Corn Laws by Samuel Johnson.
 * 1809 – An account of the incidents from which the title and part of the story of Shakspeare's Tempest were derived; and its true date ascertained.
 * 1821 – Life of Shakespeare. In Works of Shakespeare (1821), Volume II.

The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare
The years from 1783 to 1790 were devoted to Malone's own edition of Shakespeare in multiple volumes, of which his essays on the history of the stage, his biography of Shakespeare, and his attack on the genuineness of the three parts of Henry VI, were especially valuable. His editorial work was lauded by Burke, criticised by Walpole and damned by Joseph Ritson. It certainly showed indefatigable research and proper respect for the text of the earlier editions.

The Ireland forgeries
Malone published a denial of the claim to antiquity of the Rowley poems produced by Thomas Chatterton, and in this (1782) as in his branding (1796) of the Ireland manuscripts as forgeries, he was among the first to guess and state the truth. His elaborate edition of John Dryden's works (1800), with a memoir, was another monument to his industry, accuracy and scholarly care. In 1801 he received an LL.D. from Trinity College Dublin.

Malone–Boswell Shakespeare
At the time of his death, Malone was at work on a new octavo edition of Shakespeare, and he left his material to James Boswell the younger; the result was the edition of 1821 generally known as the Third Variorum edition in twenty-one volumes. Lord Sunderlin (1738–1816), his elder brother and executor, presented the larger part of Malone's book collection, including dramatic varieties, to the Bodleian Library, which subsequently bought many of his manuscript notes and his literary correspondence. The British Museum also owns some of his letters and his annotated copy of Johnson's Dictionary.

A memoir of Malone by James Boswell is included in the prolegomena to the edition of 1821.

Reputation and legacy
The Malone Society, devoted to the study of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English drama, was named after him.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Edmond Malone


text:
Talk:Sven Hassel

Untitled
BTW Has anybody tried to check records of Sven Hassel. It is possible that he did serve in the 6th panzer division or heard the stories from somebody who did. The fieldpost numbers he mentions are to the 65 panzer abteilung and 7th company which if I remember correctly he mentions in some books, then the abteilung was absorbed byt the 11th panzer regiment, both in the 6 panzer division. Some of the battles he mentions included the 6th panzer division. There was a officer named Löwe who served in the aforementioned units and got some high medals, and 11th panzer regiment provided units for the heavy panzer regiment Bäke(who might have been "Hinka"). Of course this is just guessing but maybe there's something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.60.196.68 (talk) 09:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I read nine of Hassels books when I was a kid (I grew out of him in my late teens) and it's clear that they are works of fiction. Of course they are fiction - they are novels. The author does not claim that they are autobiographies. It is not possible for a single soldier to experience all the things described in all the novels and survive. For example, the characters survive Stalingrad, the D-Day landings and Crete, and all three of those battles resulted in catastrophic losses for German forces. Very few soldiers escaped the ring at Stalingrad, for example. There are numerous liberties taken with facts. Just one: in "Liquidate Paris" he describes the "daredevil New Zealanders" storming the beaches of Normandy. Of course, the daredevil New Zealanders never fought in Normandy, as they were committed to the Italian campaign. Now, it is perfectly acceptable for Hassel to take these liberties with the facts because he is writing works of fiction, and to my knowledge he has never claimed otherwise. I really don't understand all this "controversy" about his books not being true.

 * The "controversy" is the claims often seen in the blurb of his books that he was himself a veteran of the Eastern Front, when in fact it is quite clear from Danish police records that he spent the war in Denmark (among other things in jail for bike theft and wearing a fake German uniform pretending to be SS soldier), and that he never joined the Waffen-SS, but was briefly a member of the HIPO-corps in Copenhagen during the end of the war. The claim is that his front line service gave inspiration to a lot of events in the books, and that of course cannot be true if he never saw a front line. --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:50, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I removed this fragment from the critics section:

"All of this information is published on his personal website, which is also full of lurid racist right-winger cartoons which seem to have been drawn by the illustrators of Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer."

That is incorrect - the information about Haaest's father is not on his website. Nore is it "full" of racist right-winger cartoons. Johan77 19:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I find Sven Hassel's books fascinating in their open portrayal of war's hypocracies, horrors and blatant stupidity. I think this generation and those yet to come should read and learn!

I removed the reference to "Caucasian fever," which doesn't appear to be a real illness. | Keithlaw 15:48, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Anyone else think this is sufficiently wikified to remove the wikify tag? Avocado 15:22, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

I do. --Ben davison 22:34, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Minor changes
Added Italy, Greece and the Balkans to the war theater described in the books. Also some minor spelling changes in the original book titles.

Legion Of The Damned vs later books
I only got to read Legion of the Damned (LotD) after reading several of Hassel's later books, and came away with the impression that later books were expanded and fictionalized by comparison, and written as "genre" novels. LotD, by comparison, covered the whole of Hassel's (reported) military career, ending with his commission as a lieutenant, and seemed to have more of an autobiographical "ring of truth" about it.

I don't have any of his books to hand at the moment, to make a new comparison, but I thought I should ask about it since the article makes no distinction between LotD and the later books. Does anyone else feel the same way? -- Stereoroid 03:00, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Legion of the Dammed was by far his best work. Certainly it created a lot more empathy for its central character. Reading some of the other works I actually found myself hating most of its characters. Piercetp 05:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

If you have ever read "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Legion of the Damned", then you will note that LotD is basically a re-hash of "All Quiet on the Western Front", even down to the oldest member of the unit being killed by artillery fire whilst out on a walk in the country.

Furthermore the style of 'Legion of the Damned' is totally different to the other books.

JRE 25 July 2007

Who is telling the truth?
The opening paragraph states "Sven Hassel (born April 19, 1917) is a Danish-born soldier and writer who has written pseudo-autobiographical novels based on his experiences in World War II." According to his own biography at http://www.svenhassel.net/ he states that

''and the following year, due to the great unemplyment in Denmark, he joined the German army as a volunteer. Initially he served in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and furthermore in the 11th and 27th "Panzerregiment". He fought in all the frontlines except in the North of Africa. Consequentialy Sven was wounded eight times. From 1945 to 1949 he was POW and was subject to Russian, American, French and Danish prisoner camps.''

But according to Eric Haaest (http://home.tiscali.dk/haaest/Hassel-Hazel/Texts/English/00table.htm) this is all not true. It seems that the article here tends to take the latter's point of view. Maybe this article should take on a more neutral tone. Just a thought. Piercetp 06:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Does it matter who is in fact telling the truth? It is fairly obvious that the books are fiction.. For instance Julius Heide is portrayed as some sort of weakling in some books (Sorry I can remember exactly which ones) and then as a super soldier in others. The books are also full of weird stuff. For instance I remember reading that Porta wanted to photocopy a pornographic picture so that he could sell it. Where they even invented in WWII? But the point im trying to make is that they should just be taken as good books. I dont thinks Svens history is of great importance although I do tend to naturally lean towards rejecting some of the claims that have been made against him because I am a fan. - Antony

 * I generally agree with what you say, and think it's not as bad as you say. e.g. "photocopy" used to mean to copy photographically i.e. using a camera, not necessarily using a photocopying machine! Also, I read Heide as a character who bought in to the Nazi ideology hook, line and sinker, bending his personality out of shape. Capable of being a super-soldier, but with human weaknesses that appeared at odd times. Something of a "tin soldier" whom the others could wind up and send in to battle for them! Stereoroid 22:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC).

 * I have to say i find it a bit disappointing that more effort seems to have been made inputting the "critics" section of the entry than to the actual books and the author - the article seems to be very anti Hassel now rather than a neutral summing up of his works. Wether true or not the books should be described here for their writing content / stories and not historical facts - after all they are designed to be one mans view of the war and not an overview of what happened across the entire campaigns or areas (wether or not they are an auto biography etc is irrelevent).SiHudson 00:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

German
Were his books ever published in German? Bastie 18:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Answer: I've just translated the fourth one, Frontkameraden, and am working with Sven's son Michael to translate the rest of them. Shall edit the German pages. The anke (talk) 15:43, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

ISBNs
How about some ISBNs?

 * Die Galgenvögel. Roman. (Broschiert)
 * Verlag: Goldmann Wilhelm GmbH (1987)
 * ISBN-10: 3442088771
 * ISBN-13: 978-3442088775

amazon.de Radu er (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC) who really gives a toss? there great books true or not, every ones treating sven like a fraud, the guy went through a lot as did many, but many didnt come through —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.111.4 (talk) 18:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Significance?
From the current article:

"It is significant that some Hassel fans believe Eric Haaest's version of who Sven Hassel really is, while continuing to enjoy Hassel's books."

What is so significant about that? There are probably other fans who like the books and don't care either way about the author. If your saying something is significant then you really should say why its significant.

 * I agree. For many readers it doesn't matter if the author states "I did all that" and is lying (as Karl May) or "Of course I didn't do that" (as Asimov). What matters is the fun the reader's getting. Radu er (talk) 16:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Original research
I have copied this section from the talk page of User:Ferranrivas since it is relevant to the discussion regarding the recent edits to the article (the first paragraph is written by that user):

I make specific changes to my clients. Currently made changes to the family of the writer Sven Hassel. Specifically, the request comes from her son and granddaughter, which I have indicated the changes to give more accuracy to Sven Hassel biographical text. If necessary we can provide the necessary accreditations to require anyone who wants them, but the text and links we mention the author's website and other websites have posted news about the author. I can prove my sources and I do reference to the websites where the same text is already published. What else you need to prove the veracity of my sources?

 * Svendhassel.net is the homepage of the author, and thus a WP:primary source regarding his biography. A primary source can only be used to source the opinion of the author of that source, that is, their claim that it happened in that way. So anything sourced with that should be worded "Hassel claimed", "According to Hassel himself" etc, since it is not verifiable facts but opinions. Regarding the name missing from the Bovrup Registry, that is original research, since there can be a number of reasons why he doesn't appear in that list (it isn't an infallible document), so you would need a secondary reliable source (most likely that of an historian) that makes the claim that that fact would ivariable mean he never was a member of the party. Otherwise I could just as easily produce the court documents in the various criminal cases against Hassel the occurred during the war, proving that he spent most of his time in Denmark during those 5 years. But I can't according to policy, since that would also be WP:OR. I hope I have made the Wikipedia policies a bit clearer to you, they can be somewhat daunting. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Upon reading your reply it seems that you are perhaps also in breach of the Wikipedia policies regarding conflict of interest, since you state that you edit on behalf of the family. You would perhaps be better off advising the relatives of Hassel to contact an author or historian, and get them to write a book on the subject using those accreditives you mention. That would (likely) be considered a reliable source in Wikipedia, but we can't engage in "correcting history" here ourselves. --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

As someone who recently celebrated their 60th birthday, and served in the British Army, where these novels were passed around like pornographic magazines. Let me assure you that not a word of it was ever believed as being the truth. Sven Hassel remains for many a soldier of my age, a damned good read, inasmuch as that, 'they', that platoon, could have served alongside all of us. We moaned about the same things, we hated the idiots of officers known as Ruperts, (much as the Prussian officer class had a similar sounding name), the crazy plans and even considered 'fragging' (American expression from Viet Nam, where you lob a fragmentation grenade, at an another, to get rid of them)some of the useless arses or upper ranks. Before you ask me to cite sources, just get hold of a copy of any of the books and note, not a one of them is categorised as biography nor autobiography but novels. Therefore, I suggest that you treat it, as it was written, a work of pure fiction, that has resonance with every soldier, desperate to find an escape from the boring part of the 'stand down'. To be honest, it's as if some believe that Ivan Denisovich Shukhov actually lived outside of the pages of One Day in the Life.. and seek to critique that great work for inaccuracies. If these books deserve any criticism, it's because of the minutiae of the equipment and not for the 'facts'. Hint, the 'Old Man' claims to have fought in the same battles as Hitler, but is still serving(?), before the last desperate act of calling up the Volkssturm and he considers giving 'this all up and joining a proper regiment', more suiting his age and not 'spend his time wet nursing kinder like Porta). He claims to be a year older than Hitler(dob 20 April 1889). In closing, let me say that I have enjoyed your talk about these books, even if it is patently apparent that many have not read all of them. I have. Served with Sven, in each page of those books, and am proud to call him, my brother in arms. As we said, Who cares who wins... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Woolywords (talk • contribs) 23:24, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Phone and Address Records
What's the deal with the long list of phone and address records? Who is interested in this? I'm tempted to delete most of that stuff. Marchino61 (talk) 06:11, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. I removed the phone records yesterday, but they've been restored as evidence that he was lying about his whole life. I don't see that they prove that, or anything else of interest. I think they should come out.--Fahrenheit666 (talk) 02:20, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The phone and address records most certainly prove that he lied about actually being 'Sven Hazel', i.e. that his claim that his authorship (which largely defined his post-WW2 life) as self-experienced is fraudulent. So when addressing the existing request to rewrite the article into prose, be careful not to remove this evidence. Thanks. Lklundin (talk) 08:41, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * They prove where he had a phone, and that's ALL they prove. If you can't come up with a more relevant reason for keeping this I'm going to delete it again.--Fahrenheit666 (talk) 22:59, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * No, the records do not (just) show that he and his wife had two phones and where they lived and what property he bought in Denmark. Rather, they show that over the years he used different names and titles, including Lieutenant Colonel, a high ranking officer which is notable. As such I have reinstated the information. Lklundin (talk)
 * And I will remove them, as wp:Original Research. Presenting "evidence" - the phone records and property listings - and then drawing a "conclusion" from that - that Pedersen/Hassel lied - is not our job to do, that is original research. Also the sources are primary, phone and property listings, they only show that someone using this or that name had a phone number and an address, they do not prove that such person is the subject of this article. Are there any reliable sources using that data to present that conclusion? If so, great, but please present those sources. - Nabla (talk) 00:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Per WP:BRD I am reinstating the removed material. Sven Hassel was denounced as a fraud more than 50 years ago by the journalist George Kringelbach. Numerous secondary sources repeat this - and in doing so, make it clear that there is only one Sven Hassel authorship and only one person, Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen. In the article no Wikipedian is drawing any conclusions regarding the claims of Kringelbach or otherwise. Further, while the contested material can be interpreted as "evidence" of fraud, it is not being represented as such. There is in other words no violation of WP:SYNTH. Lastly, per the numerous secondary sources regarding Hassel/Pedersen, apart from the matching names (and professions etc) there is no additional need to determine that the primary sources regarding the named persons do in fact refer to the subject of the article. Please keep these points in mind for any subsequent changes to the article. Thanks. Lklundin (talk) 21:40, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * If the long list of phone numbers is not used to prove a point, then what is it for? - Nabla (talk) 00:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The cited phone records are available for Copenhagen from when the first phones were installed there in the late 1800's and until the mid 1960's. They provide a range of notable biographical information that for some is not available via a secondary source: The title(s) the user chooses to use to describe themselves, when they first registered a phone, their address and how they change address over the years, if they have a summer residence with a phone, if a spouse is also registered as a user and if they choose to delist their phone number (and possibly more). I have cited such records for a number of biographies on Danes (that happen to have some connection to World War II, deadly in most cases), e.g. Christian Frederik von Schalburg, Georg Quistgaard, Emil Balslev, Søren Kam. While no explicit conclusion is drawn from the cited sources, they do help to form the biography of the person and the reader may very well draw their own conclusions from the provided information, as they may when reading any page on Wikipedia. I hope that helps. Lklundin (talk) 16:20, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but I have even more doubts if this should be included as is. It is primary data, and we usually don't go out collecting data - even on public record - to compose biographies. I do not think we'll get to agree on this, so I will probably create a RfC about this, or something like that, later on (weekdays are not good, so on the weekend, most likely). If you could take some time until then to help create a statement - or to convince me why not to - it would be appreciated. Something like "should we use public phone book data to show information about this person"? - Nabla (talk) 20:16, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * OK. I think the scope of just public phone book records is a bit too narrow for your idea for an RfC. Over the years I have added material to a significant number of biographies citing not only phone book records, but about two dozen different kinds of primary sources. The different types of sources are listed here (where the last handful of entries can be ignored in the current context): User:Lklundin/Source_Citation. I am aware of these sources because outside of Wikipedia they are commonly used for Scandinavian genealogy. Per WP:PRIMARY I am taking care not to interpret the cited material, and instead use the sources "to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge". To the best of my knowledge I only cite these sources for biographies of deceased persons. Other Wikipedians generally have no problem with my above use of primary sources, occasionally I get an approving nod, e.g. User_talk:Lklundin. In fact, a large number of the biographies where I cite these sources were created by myself and underwent new page patrolling (until I became autopatrolled), without incident. (The biographies I created are typically of Danish WWII resistance members, most of whom died during the war). Other such biographies are deemed vital to Wikipedia, such as that of Niels Bohr (that one cites an above primary source other than the phone book). Apart from Hassel/Pedersen, biographies of other controversial persons where I have used these sources are: Peter Adler Alberti and Estvan Svend Aage Wehlast (the latter created by myself using almost entirely primary sources), perhaps you also wish to review these. To me, the guidelines at WP:PRIMARY seem pretty clear and uncontroversial, but if you feel that additional clarification is needed, then I think you should go ahead with the RfC - and I remain available for any additional discussion of my use of primary sources. Lklundin (talk) 16:55, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

 * I have undone your removal of sourced, notable and on-topic material, such as Hassel's/Pedersen's description of himself as a Lieutenant Colonel. Please read and address the above comments from myself and before suggesting further changes. Thank you. Lklundin (talk) 20:53, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It is not notable. Please stop pushing this weird argument. Phone records are not notable.--Fahrenheit666 (talk) 23:10, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Since there are few reliable sources into the life of this person and especially since his own statements can either not be verified or are known to be incorrect (contrary to his own claim, he was never a Soviet POW, rather he was serving a prison sentence in his home country for treason), it is essential to quote those reliable sources that are actually available. The old phone books from Kjøbenhavns Telefon Aktieselskab, available online, are a perfectly reliable and verifiable set of sources, that provide notable biographical information and which are cited in a number of Wikipedia biographies. You have also removed information about his real-estate purchases and sales, again notable and on topic information, including the information that the emigrated to Spain. I rather resent your misguided use of our 'lack of consensus' policy, which in a deletion discussion means that the content per default is to be kept, not to be removed like you did. Please try to contribute in a more constructive manner. Thank you. Lklundin (talk) 07:04, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Spelling fix
I saw that the page title had the misspelling "Offical", but since the display text had the correct spelling, "Welcome to the Official Sven Hassel Site." as a title, it would be ok to use that. Do you disagree? SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:42, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Template:Cite_web says "Title of source page on website". For some web-pages it is ambiguous which displayed text is supposed to be read as the title, so I usually go by the HTML text (which a browser like Firefox renders on the tab + window frame). I guess in this case it can be said that the actual title text was supposed to be equal to the displayed text. If we choose to go with the displayed text, then we should update the comment that the misspelled HTML title is not shown due to the displayed text, to prevent future confusion. Maybe we wait a couple of days to see if others have an opinion. Lklundin (talk) 06:36, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

RfC on the use of primary sources
Should this article use not only phone book records, but several different kinds of primary sources, as it does? Please take a look at the discussions above, at the sections "Original research" and "Phone and Address Records". - Nabla (talk) 02:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Pinging everyone editing here in the last 50 edits, with at least an edit in the last year: If I missed anyone, I am sorry and ask that you please fix it or warn me. - Nabla (talk) 02:41, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I know the above question may be too broad, I am not used to this... So if we end up changing it soon, or closing the RfC with a way to ask it better, I would appreciate it too. - Nabla (talk) 02:45, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Comment – Since this page is a biography, the question needs to either be asked and discussed for all biographies, or it has be be argued that this particular page needs special treatment. Lklundin (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No This is an encyclopedia. It is not a platform for weird personal vendettas and extracts from the phone book.--Fahrenheit666 (talk) 17:40, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment – I feel compelled to respond to what I consider a personal attack against me and my contributions. As such I would like to point out that for Wikipedia I have created dozens of historical, personal biographies and contributed to many more, in a fashion similar to this page and that 'the phone book' is a historical collection of the national postal museum of Denmark, who has seen fit to digitalize their archive expressly for the purpose of facilitating public access to it, to the benefit of for example Wikipedia. Lklundin (talk) 09:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Comment - Primary documents such as phone books, government records, etc., are legitimate sources to confirm facts, as long as they are published or official. However, these type of documents only show that an event happened or that a piece of information is likely true. Because they are created routinely, they don't indicate that the information is important and should be in an encyclopedia.  The parts of the article about his personal life read more like a well-researched genealogy project than an encyclopedia article, and some of the detail supported by the primary sources is just excessive in this context.  This man is known for his books about WWII - why would we need to know who the best man was at his wedding, or how many stories were in his apartment building, or what size the lot under his house was, or what year his brothers joined the army, or whether and how many telephones he had?  If the article is trimmed of all of this material, some of the primary sources which don't relate to his career could be eliminated.  Unlike a genealogical timeline (which attempts to trace a person's life in as much detail as possible, backed up with primary sources if possible), an encyclopedia article is supposed to be a summary of information about a subject that has been considered important enough to be written about in published books, magazines, newspapers, and other documents created by authors and journalists who are not friends and relatives. On a side note - the quotes in the article should be removed unless they can be attributed to such a source - otherwise they are "original research"—Anne Delong (talk) 06:11, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - The typical reader goes to our biographical articles for an answer to a question like: "Who is this named person?" In this case, already the answer to the question regarding the name is non-trivial. This person has no less than four relevant names, his pen name (Sven Hassel), his pen name in Denmark - Sven Hazel - (and why does he even use two different pen names?), his birth name, and the name he took (after he was outed as a convicted traitor). Many secondary sources use only his pen name, others do not get his actual name right. So just the name he goes by is notable, if not essential to his biography. He is known for his books set in Word War II and for this sensational claims of personal experiences during that war. As such, any information that reliable sources can provide related to his military service are highly relevant. In providing such information, I have taken our policy on primary sources quite literally and thus quoted their information basically in their entirety. I.e. not only did he in 1953 refer to himself as a Lieutenant Colonel, but that he did so while registering his phone. It would be desirable if we could reach a consensus for what information should be deleted from the article. As such, I would find it acceptable if we, from these primary sources, kept only the strictly notable parts, e.g. not under which circumstances he used a certain name and profession, but just when he did so. As for his addresses and real estate dealings, I find it notable to see his progression from a flat in a poorer working-class neighborhood to his purchase of a house on a large lot in an upper-class neighborhood (and then a second house). But again, in the interest of consensus, I would not insist that we keep this information. If someone can formulate a more compact version of his transition, residential and real-estate wise within our primary source policy, then I think that would be ideal. As for his brother being his best man, this is also notable: Some WW2 traitors had their connections with their families severed, so the fact that his brother was his best man 18 months after his release from prison is notable. Also related to his two brothers and his claim of being a highly ranking officer, I find it essential to provide any reliable information on his actual military dealings, including the fact that unlike his two brothers there is no record of him being even evaluated for military fitness (in Denmark). This may in some sense support his frankly extraordinary claim that he became a naturalized German citizen prior to the war (where he could thus serve in the regular army as opposed to the SS where any foreigner would serve), a claim for which we have only his own word. To return to his real-estate dealings, it is also notable that when he relocates to Spain he and his wife sell their two houses in Denmark, giving the move a more permanent character. So to sum up, for the actual formulations and the admittedly large amount of details, I would like to try and reach a consensus, where we stay within our policies, using broader descriptions and fewer details, maintaining his unusual use of many different names and professions, especially with regard to his relation (or lack thereof) to any military entity. Lklundin (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that is all quite fine. I think you most likely could write a book - even a set of them - with a set of biographies as the ones you have been working on in here. I think everything you say above is quite interesting to have in those detailed biographies. I really think you should try to write them, with even more detail and get them published. You would probably do a good service to history (of the WWII, of Denmark). I just think that this is not the place for that. I think explained it quite well, so I will not add anymore here. - Nabla (talk) 23:32, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes Just for the record I will state explicitly that I oppose the blanket disqualification of primary sources that fulfill our general requirements at WP:PRIMARY. Lklundin (talk) 15:12, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree with Anne Delong, the trivia of when and where he took out phones is not - and cannot - be given any significance and is simply left 'floating' as an uninterpreted and uninterpretable raw data. We might as well be recording the colour of his curtains. Possibly it is seeking to imply significance, in which case it is being used inaptly. Pincrete (talk) 20:23, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

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Original research
I have briefly skimmed discussions/RfCs below but it really is simple: read WP:PRIMARY, WP:OR and, inter alia, WP:SYNTH. I don't care how good some Wikipedia contributor might consider themselves to be as a genealogist, we simply don't rely on parish registers, census records, phone books etc. Feel free to write a biography, get it published by a mainstream, reliable publisher & then hope that someone else picks up that book and uses it to improve this article as a valid secondary source. Until you do that, please stop adding your research here. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 23:29, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sven Hassel


text:
Talk:Babes in Toyland (band)

Untitled
I changed the bit about "Bruise Violet" being a "wholesale character assassination" of Courtney Love, for reasons of NPOV. The song certainly doesn't contain any direct references to specific flaws. Tuf-Kat

 * I wanted to point out that Hole's "Live Through This" LP opens with a song called "Violet". Since according to the current wiki page, 'Bjelland has denied [the song being an attack on Courtney], saying instead that "Violet" was the name of a muse to both her and Courtney' it stands to reason that this is indeed the same Violet person. Both lyrics talk about "stars", etc.

In the interest of clarity

Eagle (talk) (desk) 19:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

There's no page for Katastrophy Wife, and there probably shouldn't be--it seems very much a Bjelland project and should be discussed on her page.

I'm going to change the B'jellands to Bjellands--if someone has evidence that B'jelland really is the more official spelling, please cite it. Nareek 16:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Riot Grrrl?
I think the characterization in the opening paragraph of Babes in Toyland as a "riot grrrl" band is inaccurate. While they were definitely an inspiration for bands in the Riot Grrrl movement, they existed before and during the movement, but never played any part in it.

Former Members
Can anyone find solid references that Maggie Dunn of We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It ever played with Babes in Toyland? There are some non-encylopedic sites that claim she was in the band in late 2001. Another person added to the ex-member list who seems to have no support for being there is Jose Camarillo, so I'm removing him.--Larrybob (talk) 20:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Facebook Page
Just to let everyone know that this page is showing up with the title "House" on the facebook version of the Wikipedia page (see at http://www.facebook.com/pages/House/103092843063891). This seems to be due to the redirecting of the page at House_(Babes_in_Toyland_song). Am not sure how to fix this.Vibracobra23 (talk) 20:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

grunge
i'm adding grunge to the info box since this band's mentioned as a prominent non seattle grunge group in the grunge article — Preceding unsigned comment added by I call the big one bitey (talk • contribs) 09:00, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Courtney Love
I edited down the section on Courtney Love's involvement. Parts of it appeared non-encyclopedic and relying on rumour. The accusation by the band that stole money is unsubstantiated and can be presented as a quote as this is the band's opinion. Karst (talk) 13:47, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Balance
Maintainers? This sentence: is unfortunate. It accurately reflects the source, but Unterberger doesn't provide any support for that statement, and he appears to take great offense at the band. It would be great if that statement could be balanced with an opposing viewpoint. The Kathleen Hanna quote that follows kind of does that, but it would fit better in the preceding paragraph, referring as it does to the riot grrl movement. Dementia13 (talk)
 * Veteran critic Richie Unterberger noted that Babes in Toyland were "considered something of a joke band even within the underground"

 * I agree. Putting the quote in the lead seems too acerbic and would fit better within the text as criticism, which is why I put the Kathleen Hanna quote in the lead, to add balance. Perhaps both could be moved to within the article. I could find no other source for Unterberger's statement. Dubyavee (talk) 03:17, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I know there are fans of the band here (myself included) but you just cannot slag Unterberger. 82.132.228.138 (talk) 10:47, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Things like this do NOT belong in the introduction. DCEvoCE (talk) 14:02, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Unfortunately I do not have Michele Leon's book, I think she talks about the sexism surrounding their appearance on the scene and Unterberger clearly just talked to one of those sexist critics and very sloppily summed up the band with that one source. It does need to be moved out of the intro and discussed in context. Dubyavee (talk) 20:45, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

 * DCEvoCE, Dubyavee: I find the inclusion of Unterberger's claim in the article kind of unnecessary in the first place—I also don't quite know why Kathleen Hanna's opinion on the band's legacy is worth including either. These two sentiments are all that make up the "Reception" section of the article (which is where these ×quotes appear to have been relocated), and I frankly think that section is problematic to begin with, as it's difficult to collate the "reception" of a band—it's far too varied and impossible to calculate, especially when they had a career that spanned two decades. I'm not sure how you could provide an adequate summary of something like this. If Unterberger's passive, vague writing-off of the group and Hanna's "worry" that they're being forgotten are all we can include here, I'd say it's better of not even being part of the article at all. --Drown Soda (talk) 01:07, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Babes in Toyland (band)