The Passing Of The Puritan (1900)
"Since all men, whatever their race, opinions and prejudices, are composed of good and evil, it follows that all general terms may be complimentary or abusive according to the point of view of the man who uses them. When Maria, in Twelfth Night, describes Malvolio as a Puritan she intends to be abusive. Indeed, originally the term was the expression of contempt. The "Puritans or Novelists" were a new-fangled and popularly disliked sect. In his English Social History (p. 233) Dr. Trevelyan admits they were hated at the time of the Restoration. Indeed, hatred of the Puritans made the Restoration inevitable. They have remained popularly disliked in England unto this day. None the less, what are claimed as the distinctive Puritan virtues have come to be widely acknowledged and the Puritans are credited with a beneficent influence on the life of the English-speaking peoples which I am suggesting in this book they have most certainly not had." (Chapter 1)https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002037208494&view=2up&seq=6&size=125
Stage Silhouettes (1901)
"I AM anxious to impress on my readers at the beginning that I have no exaggerated idea of the intrinsic value of the following pages. They are attempts to give impressions of the personal characteristics of stage celebrities, and are reprinted in volume form because my publishers and I both believe the book may have a sufficient sale to make its production profitable. There is a very great deal of nonsense written nowadays of the impertinence of personal journalism. I admit that elaborate descriptions of men's habits are not a little vulgar, but I am quite certain that a true understanding of the artist's character is an illuminating criticism of his art, and that the man who has the skill to draw a vivid picture of the artist away from his work is helping the public considerably to properly understand the work." (Preface)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433078159237&view=2up&seq=10
William Makepeace Thackeray (1912)
63 pages long. Divided into short chapters. Little Books On Great Writers. "It is evident that the ambition of the writer of a new and short monograph on Thackeray (or indeed any much biographed personality) must be circumscribed. It is not for him to discover new incidents and facts or to enter into detailed analyses of the famous novels. All that can be done is to endeavour to "place" the novelist from the most modern point of view, and the utmost that I can claim for this little book is that it contains a reasoned but entirely individual criticism and appreciation." (Chapter 1)https://books.google.gr/books?id=Ak3QAAAAMAAJ
Thou Art The Man: The Story Of A Great Crime (1914)
"As the war proceeds it becomes more and more important that the British people should clearly understand why it began, what exactly are the forces against which the Allies are struggling, and why we must fight on until the Prussianized German Empire is utterly destroyed. Official publications prove to a demonstration that the whole responsibility for the ghastly tragedy through which we are living rests with the Kaiser Wilhelm and his advisers. Unhappily the man in the street does not read Blue-Books and there is still considerable ignorance as to the real meaning of the war. This ignorance will be used by pro-Germans and peace fanatics the moment it suits the enemy to suggest a premature ending of hostilities. With the idea, therefore, of bringing the facts to the knowledge of the people, on whom Great Britain depends for the majority of her fighting men, the Daily Express has commissioned Mr. Sidney Dark, a leading member of its staff, to write the following simple summary. He has endeavoured to show that we are not fighting for Empire or for greed, but to preserve our right to live the lives of free men and to destroy the Power that has by its acts denied all the ties of honour and religion, and is threatening civilization with a ruthless devil's tyranny." (Foreword)https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101062162837&view=2up&seq=6
Charles Dickens (1919)
115 pages long. Divided into short chapters. The People’s Books No. 58. ""Dickens", Mr. G. K. Chesterton has written, "is as individual as the sea and as English as Nelson" ; and I can find no better excuse than this for writing another—and a very little—book about him. Dickens is to me a writer apart. I have been reading and re-reading his novels since I was six. I know his characters as I hardly know any of the men and women I have met in the flesh. Dickens is the novelist of the lettered and of the unlettered. The man at the street corner who has hardly heard of Thackeray knows all about Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. This is the glory of Dickens. In the pages that follow I have retold, briefly and simply, the events of his life. I have summarised his "cheery, gladsome message", and I have endeavoured to suggest the particular value and significance of each of his principal books. A writer so universal inevitably appeals to different men in different manners. Of all the books I have read on Dickens, I find myself in most complete agreement with Mr. Chesterton's characteristic monograph. I have quoted frequently from his pages, and I have to acknowledge my indebtedness for many suggestive annotations that have helped to fuller understanding." (Chapter 1)
https://archive.org/details/charlesdickens00darkuoft
An Outline Of Wells: The Superman In The Street (1922) · Introduction by Heywood Broun (1888–1939)
"A short, stocky man with a scrubby moustache and a high-pitched voice; a man nearer sixty than fifty but looking considerably younger; a man whose like you can see a thousand times a day in every city's streets. Such, superficially, is H. G. Wells whom Anatole France has recently described—and accurately described—as the greatest intellectual force in the English-speaking world. The weakness of most supermen is their unlikeness to their fellows and this unlikeness is often quite as obvious physically as it is mentally and morally. You cannot meet Bernard Shaw, without realising at once that he is not as other men. There is something strange and unusual about him. You guess at once that he eats differently and drinks differently, thinks differently and dreams differently from the rest of us. The aspirations of such a man, his admonitions and his doctrines are intensely interesting but their importance to the world is limited by his detachment from his fellows.
Intellectually, of course, H. G. Wells is immensely superior to the common run of men. He is a born leader and inspirer of men and—this is the point of outstanding importance—he remains a man of like passions with ourselves. Shaw and most of the intellectuals belong to a class apart. They generally recognise their separation from the crowd and glory in it. The intellectual habitually stands at the street corners and thanks God that he is not as other men. The glory of Bunyan and Charles Dickens is that they stood at the street corners and thanked God that they were as other men. Wells has many affinities with Dickens. He does not possess Dickens's glorious humour. He has never been able to realise that even in mean streets life may have its thrills, but he belongs essentially, as Dickens belonged, to the English lower middle class. Wells is an articulate man of the people. And this is the fact that gives him his peculiar importance in the modern world." (Chapter 1)
https://archive.org/details/outlineofwellssu00dark/page/n7/mode/2up
The Child's Book Of England (1922)
"This is not a lesson book. If it is anything at all, it is a story book, a book which boys and girls will read for fun. I am quite sure that history can be read without tears, and if The Child's Book of England is found dull by the small people for whom it is written, this will not prove that history is dull, but that I have failed in the task that I have attempted. All the histories of England specially written for children, that I have read, are either entirely devoted to the doings of over-praised kings and queens or are so hopelessly prejudiced that the facts are distorted. Charles Dickens's Child's History of England is, for example, written from the first page to the last with a Victorian Radical's hatred of kings, and a Victorian Protestant's hatred of priests, and I hardly know another book calculated to convey so many false impressions. I do not, of course, claim to have written without my own partialities.
This is necessarily a short book and there are many omissions, and I am conscious that I may have failed to explain clearly some of the developments of government. All I claim for The Child's Book of England is that it has been written with the sole idea of persuading English children that they are the heirs of a magnificent heritage." (Pages vii & viii)
https://archive.org/details/childsbookofengl00dark/page/n7/mode/2up
The New Reading Public (1922)
19 pages long. "THE following lecture, delivered by Mr. Sidney Dark at the Essex Hall as the first of a series of lectures arranged by the Society of Bookmen for assistants and employees of the book trade, is not only so excellent but so stimulating and encouraging that an introduction cannot be necessary. But in publishing the lecture the Society desires to offer its grateful thanks to Mr. Sidney Dark, and takes an occasion for saying an explanatory word about itself. The Society of Bookmen was founded towards the end of last year for the purpose of bringing together representatives of all the different industries that are engaged in the creation and distribution of books. Its aim is the advancement or widening of the general knowledge and appreciation of good literature ; and that is its only aim. It has no grievance to redress, no axe to grind, no logs to roll. Its members comprise publishers, authors, booksellers, journalists, librarians, literary agents, etc.; in a word, people who live by books and for books. At present its membership has been restricted to a small number; but later on, when its organization has become established and when, as is hoped, the success of its activities may justify enlargement, many more members or associates will be cordially welcomed." (Foreword)
https://archive.org/details/newreadingpublic00darkrich/page/n7/mode/2up
The Life Of Sir Arthur Pearson (1922)
"Lady (Arthur) Pearson and her son, Sir Neville Pearson, did me the great honour to suggest that I should write this life of the man whom I served for some years and for whom I had the most sincere affection and admiration. I am greatly indebted to them for the information with which they have provided me and for much helpful criticism, but the book is entirely mine, and I am alone responsible for its estimates and its judgments." (Note)https://archive.org/details/lifeofsirarthurp00darkrich/page/n7/mode/2up
The Book Of France For Young People (1923)
"I wrote this little book two years ago in order to tell English boys and girls something about the French people and the great country of France in which so many English soldiers fought during the Great War, and where so many English soldiers lie buried far away from their own homes. It seemed to me that because brave French and English soldiers fought side by side, for what seemed to them a good and just cause, English children would like to know more about the people who are really their next-door neighbours. Of course you all know that towards the end of the war, thousands of American soldiers crossed the Atlantic also to fight in France, and you know too, that many of these splendid Americans were killed in the battles against the Germans, heroically giving their lives for the same cause as the French and the English. I thought, therefore, that American boys and girls would also be interested in the story of France. So I have slightly altered my book, which has already been read by hundreds of English children, in the hope that this American edition may interest the boys and girls of your country. It has been a great pleasure to me to do this because, although I am an Englishman living in London, I have many cousins who are citizens of the United States, and I hope that some of my cousins may read this book and that it may give pleasure to them as well as to many other American boys and girls." (Pages v & vii)https://archive.org/details/bookoffrancefory00dark/page/n5/mode/2up
The Story Of The Renaissance (1923)
People’s Library. "The Renaissance, the rebirth of Europe, is generally regarded as the period of history that began in 1453 with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks and came to an end with the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. In no period of human history, with the exception of the last hundred and fifty years, did so many portentous events happen. It was an era of great happenings and great men. In Italy it was the age of Michael Angelo, Rafael, and Leonardo da Vinci, of Botticelli, Benvenuto Cellini, Correggio, and Titian, of Petrarch and Tasso, of Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia. In France it was the age of Henry of Navarre, of Rabelais, and of Montaigne. In Spain, of Cervantes and the gloomy Philip. In Germany it was the age of Dürer and Van Eycks. In England it was the age of Henry VIII and Thomas More, of Elizabeth, Drake, and Shakespeare. During the Renaissance Luther and Calvin played their great roles, and it saw Loyola and the little understood counter-Reformation. At the beginning, Columbus and Da Gama made their voyages, and its later years were made romantic by the hazardous adventures of Frobisher and Drake. It was the age of the New Learning, an age of adventure, an age of criticism, an age of laughter, an age of reaction and rejection, of destruction and reconstruction, of glory for princes and of suffering for the common people." (Chapter 1)https://archive.org/details/storyofrenaissan00darkuoft/page/n5/mode/2up
W. S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters (1923)
"MY friend, the late Henry Rowland-Brown, an intimate friend of Sir W. S. Gilbert in the later years of his life, had intended to write the biography of the author of the Bab Ballads and the Savoy libretti. The war and the long serious illness that finally occasioned his death prevented him from carrying out his intention. He left behind him certain memoranda, and before his death, he had related to his sister, Miss Rowland Grey, a vast amount of Gilbertiana, without which this book could hardly have been written. Miss Rowland Grey's knowledge and enthusiasm have made it possible to attempt the task." (Foreword)https://archive.org/details/wsgilberthislife002560mbp
https://archive.org/details/wsgilberthislife0000dark/page/n9/mode/2up
London (1924)
"There are a dozen ways in which a London book can be written. My plan has been to go, one after the other, to the scenes made vivid by Mr. Pennell's genius, to conjure up visions of the men and women whose lives have been associated with each place and to recall something of their past. Most of the fascination of every city is in its past. It must be dull and lonely to live in a new city, while to live in an old city like London is to enjoy the society of a very noble army of ghosts. It has been a fascinating adventure to follow in Mr. Pennell's footsteps and mingle with the ghosts of London. I have not attempted to be comprehensive. I have only met the ghosts who interest me. I have only recalled the events that are important to me. I am conscious of the fact that I am far too prejudiced and far too lazy to write a reliable and all-inclusive reference book. Many of the great and good have passed me by unseen. But certainly, thanks to Mr. Pennell, I have had thrilling visions. I have seen old Talleyrand with his weary eyes looking out of the windows of a house at the corner of Brook Street and Hanover Square ; I have watched Ben Jonson busy with his trowel in the building of the gate of Lincoln's Inn ; I have seen Addison going to church at St. Mary Abbots ; I have followed Pepys in many of his cheery jaunts. The book is the story of my adventures." (Introduction)https://archive.org/details/london00dark/page/n11/mode/2up
Saint Thomas Of Canterbury (1927)
Great English Churchmen Series.https://archive.org/details/saintthomasofcan0000dark/page/n5/mode/2up