Plum Pudding: Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned

Christopher Morley's 1919 essay collection is a literary plum pudding: rich, varied, and seasoned with wit. These pieces range across books, writing, city streets, and the peculiar joy of being a reader in the world. Morley writes with the ease of a literary conversationalist, someone you'd happily share a table with at a Philadelphia café, rambling about why certain sentences matter or what makes a bookshop feel like church. He's not professing; he's chatting, and in that chat you'll find sharp observations about creativity, the book trade, and the small pleasures that make a life. Some essays are tributes to fellow writers, others are manifestos for the literate life. The whole collection has the warmth of someone who genuinely believes literature makes everything better. It captures a moment when writers still spoke directly to their readers as friends. For anyone who has ever felt that books were less like products and more like companions, this is a quiet celebration of that devotion.