The New Republic (novel)

1877 novel by William Hurrell Mallock

The New Republic or Culture, Faith and Philosophy in an English Country House by English author William Hurrell Mallock (1849–1923) is a novel first published by Chatto and Windus of London in 1877. The work had its genesis as a serialization. In June–December 1876 it appeared as a series of sketches in Belgravia magazine.

The novel is a satire consisting almost entirely of dialogue and mocking most of the important figures then at Oxford University, with regards to aestheticism and Hellenism.

The famous people Mallock depicts are as follows, together with the names of the characters that represent them. Matthew Arnold — Mr. Luke
Thomas Carlyle — Donald Gordon This depiction of Pater appeared during the competition for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry and played a role in convincing Pater to remove himself from consideration.

The New Republic inspired a number of novels in which representative gatherings of intellectuals discuss important issues of the day in a country house setting, including Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson's A Modern Symposium (1905), John Buchan's A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906) — set in a multi millionaire's lodge on the East Kenyan Plateau — and Ronald Knox's Sanctions (1924). Evelyn Waugh, in his Life of Ronald Knox writes that "Mallock's New Republic was an essential book to Ronald, perhaps his favourite work of secular literature outside the Classics." H. G. Wells's satirical novel Boon (1915) is explicitly indebted to The New Republic, even featuring the "villa by the sea" that is the setting for Mallock's novel.