On Christmas Eve, while the Perfect Reader sits in his armchair immersed in a book -- so absorbed that he has let the fire go out -- I propose to slip gently down the chimney and leave this tribute in his stocking. It is not a personal tribute. I speak, on behalf of the whole fraternity of writers, this word of gratitude -- and envy. But the Perfect Reader, for whom all fine things are written, knows no such delicate anguish. When he reads, it is without any arriere pensee, any twingeing consciousness of self. I like to think of one Perfect Reader of my acquaintance. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader!

Author Biography

Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures. Morley began writing while still in college. He edited The Haverfordian and contributed articles to that college publication. He provided scripts for and acted in the college's drama program. In Oxford a volume of his poems, The Eighth Sin (1912), was published. After graduating from Oxford, Morley began his literary career at Doubleday, working as publicist and publisher's reader. In 1917 he got his start as an editor for Ladies' Home Journal (1917-1918), then as a newspaper reporter and newspaper columnist in Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. Morley's first novel, Parnassus on Wheels, appeared in 1917. The protagonist, traveling bookseller Roger Mifflin, appeared again in his second novel, The Haunted Bookshop in 1919. In 1920 Morley returned to New York City to write a column (The Bowling Green) for the New York Evening Post. Author of more than 100 novels, books of essays and volumes of poetry, Morley is probably best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle, which was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. Another well-known work is Thunder on the Left (1925).