Talk:Hall Caine

Hall Caine was a Language and literature good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 8, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 1, 2007.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that The Christian by Hall Caine (published 1897) was the first novel in Britain to sell over a million copies?

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The Fate of Fenella

I have removed The Fate of Fenella - (1892) from the list of Caine's works. The list of the 24 authors for this work which appears in the Conan Doyle Bibliography by Green and Gibson does not include Caine, although it is conceivable that ha may have been using a pseudonym. Eclecticology 05:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to Allen, p. 434, The Fate of Fenella did appear in 1892 (in 3 volumes) although the publisher is unknown but likely to have been American; there is no record of any UK publication. Peter I. Vardy 19:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed again. If Caine did contribute to this novel please explain why his name is omitted from the title page of the novel. Eclecticology 08:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Added Rating

Hi, I have given this article a rating after seeing it in the Assessment Requests section of WPBiogaphy. Please view my comments for specific details on reasons behind my rating and other comments I have about the article. - Lulu288 22:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This article, alas, seems to have a bit too many problems with it to be a GA. I think a large amount of the problems stem from only having one actual person as a writer of the two references, it appears the article is more or less mirroring the kind of wording in these works, and it suffers from serious POV problems because of it. The lead also seems to suffer because of this, and pre-occupies itself too much with POV language, which detracts from it as a summary of the article. I'll list some examples and try to explain what I mean:

"He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his contemporaries." Best known by whom? Exceedingly popular to whom and by what standard is popularity being measured by here? How was this class of writer defined for the purposes of stating that he outsold his contemporaries, is there perhaps another Wikipedia article on this topic?

"He was a lover of the Isle of Man and Manx culture..." What does "lover of the Isle of Man and Manx culture" mean, just that he liked ita whole bunch? Or did his whole life revolve around thinking about it? I suspect this kind of classical language is coming almost directly from the reference, this should be translated into more precise language.

"A man of striking appearance, he travelled widely and used his travels to provide the settings for some of his novels. He came into contact with, and was influenced by, many of the leading personalities of the day, particularly those of a socialist leaning." What does striking appearance mean, who agreed that his appearance was in fact striking, what does "travelled widely" mean and why wait until the rest of the article to say whether it was primarily around Europe or not, and who were the leading personalities of the socialist movement in this time period?

"Caine's novels now seem outdated and despite his immense popularity during his life he is now virtually unknown and unremembered." outdated to whom, why does the article have to describe his popularity in such glowing terms, who is virtually not acknowladging him, (For instance, I doubt that this writer was ever known at all to, say, the Chinese or the Arabs, its a western bias kind of thing) and if he's virutally unremembered, why is there a Wikipedia article on the topic? Whether the reference says this or not, I have serious problems believing this when there's apparently so much material on this figure even using just a single reference. Homestarmy 14:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"During this time he paid a number of visits to relatives on the Isle of Man where the foundations for a life-long attachment to the island, to its language, its myths and its legends were built[2]." This languagage reads like it was copied, why list all of those things when just "the island and the island's culture" will probably do? What is "Attachment" here? I can't get inside this Allen fellow's head to figure that out, and neither can any readers of this article.

"He developed a passion for books...." What is a passion for books? This language is too flamboyant.

"At the age of 15 he discovered the poetry of Coleridge and this was to be his first important literary influence." Was this poetry lost in the mists of time or something? "Discovered" probably isn't the most neutral word to use here, it comes with too much positive connotation that this figure probably doesn't deserve, since I seriously doubt he found this Coleridge person's poetry after it was lost for hundreds of years or something.

"In 1870 his grandfather died and later that year Caine had a type of nervous breakdown." ....What type?

"...and a keen member of the local Ruskin Society" What is a keen member?

"At this time Caine's political beliefs were in the area of communism, but this was a type of communism nearer to Christian socialism than to Marxism[5]." This is an interesting little fact, but it doesn't come with much explanation, why were these beliefs classified as closer to Christian socialism than Marxism?

"Caine was very impressed by the performance and wrote an enthusiatic and favourable review which was well received." This sort of sentence is exemplary of the kind of problematic language rife in this article. What does "very impressed" mean, why does this sentence need to say both enthusiatic and favourable to describe his review, (unless it was copied straight out of Allen's work, which is probably a bad idea) and who recieved it, only Irving? The whole theatre troupe? What does "well recieved" mean?

Why does the postscript section feature a section of criticism from just a single critic? Why was this critic so amazingly important that he and he alone gets his own section in this article? This seems to be quite undue-weightish.

I could go on, but then this entire talk page may be filled with my ramblings. The rest of the article suffers from this kind of classical language usage, which I have a strong suspicion derives from directly using the text of this Allen fellow as a source. Using only one source on a subject like this who apparently had so much going on in his life is liable to give an ultimatly biased look at this figure, (which appears to of already happened) and will likely be missing out on some details that Allen didn't know about or just didn't want to mention. This entire article will likely need to be almost compleatly re-written to resolve these serious POV problems, as it appears Allen's favorable point of view is rife throughout the article's language. There ought to be many more different references given throughout this article, and the parts referencing Allen ought to be re-written to reflect just the facts allen is trying to convey, not his personal point of view. This is quite a long way from a Good Article. Homestarmy 14:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Homestarmy for your review. I accept your conclusion but not all of your comments. I have placed some of my reservations on your talk page. Peter I. Vardy 13:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hall Caine's Books Brought Back To The Shelves

I Am a great lover of this mans work, and I am bringing some of His works back to the shelves, I am an indipendant Publisher and the first one is The Shadow of a Crime, I chose this one firs as I live in cumbria where the Book is based on, also The Son of Hagar is local to me,I intend to make him a writer to be talked about again, I have already had the newspapers and radio, I am now waiting for the TV report. He was a good friend of Walpole, and I think his writing is just as good.Tandy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.164.209 (talk) 13:42, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Hall Caine/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The article seems well-researched with inline citations where necessary. Also, the pictures are helpful to viewers. The prose is not bad, but could use some improvement and finesse.

Some of my other suggestions would be to lengthen the lead section (see Wikipedia's info on lead sections and revise the prose to make the writing style more eloquent. Also, perhaps starting the article with a pronoun like "He" is not as suitable as just saying "Caine."

Because it has not been through GA review, I would rate this article as B-class. However, through making some improvements I would recommend you submit this for GA nomination. Overall, a good effort from the main editors and contributors of this article, and I hope you'll all continue to improve this article in the future. If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to leave a note on my talk page. - Lulu288 22:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 22:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 17:01, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Letter from Tumblety

In Hall Caine's 1997 biography by Allen, appears the transcript of a letter Tumblety wrote to Caine, dated 28th January 1875, in which the word 'feminine' was used. Allen describes it as a 'strange remark'.^[1] Riordan's 2009 biography of Tumblety suggests that the word 'feminine', which many interpreted as a reference to a homosexual relationship, was transcribed incorrectly. In the context of the sentence the word he suggested is 'genuine'.^[2] Bram Stoker's 2012 biography by Stoker contains a fresh transcript of the same letter and the word 'feminine' has been replaced by 'genuine'.^[3] 81.110.218.31 81.110.218.31 (talk) 09:12, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Allen, Vivien (1997). Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer. Shefield: Sheffield Academic Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-1850758099.
^ Riordan, Timothy B. (2009). Prince of Quacks: The Notorious Life of Dr. Francis Tumblety, Charlatan and Jack the Ripper Suspect. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-7864-4433-5.
^ Storey, Neil R. (2012). The Dracula Secrets. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-0752480480.

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Referencing problems

I have fixed numerous harv/sfn errors, many of which are years old. There are three which I was unable to fix. They are "Curtis Jr. 2001", "Skall 2016", and "Nichol 2009". DuncanHill (talk) 21:50, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Allen, Vivien (1997). Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer. Shefield: Sheffield Academic Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-1850758099.

[2] Riordan, Timothy B. (2009). Prince of Quacks: The Notorious Life of Dr. Francis Tumblety, Charlatan and Jack the Ripper Suspect. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-7864-4433-5.

[3] Storey, Neil R. (2012). The Dracula Secrets. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-0752480480.

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