OK so I've had people try to name this author or that author in a Great Men theory of "doesn't this work of literature make for SOMETHING good about the era?"
Let me tell you the story of the book, The Life of Mahomet, by Washington Irving.
Yes, the Washington Irving who wrote Sleepy Hollow.
In 1828, Irving was an accomplished author, and visited the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain. If you haven't seen it, words cannot capture this place, and Irving was absolutely inspired.
So he wrote The Tales of the Alhambra, a historiography of the place, as it had changed hands over the centuries.
It did quite well--books of the sort were quite popular at the time. So, in his continuing inspiration, Irving set to write the first ever western biography of the Prophet Mohammed (whose name was at the time misappropriated as Mahomet).
His research was exhaustive. Like, I cannot overstate how hard he worked on the biography.
And what he wrote? Well, you'd expect a racist, religious screed, right (Irving was Protestant)?
It was honest, fair, and kind, both to the Prophet and Islam. While Irving lacked access to many of the tools and knowledge later scholars would gain, the original draft of The Life of Mahomet actually stands up pretty well today as a secular biography of one of the most important religious figures to ever live.
And, again, there was a clear market for this sort of book. And, again, Irving was a tried-and-true multigenre literary darling.
Not a single publisher would touch it.
Literally. Nobody.
Not in America. Not in England. Not in Europe.
Because it didn't condemn the Prophet or Islam.
And this isn't today's publishing world, with a Big Five and agents. There were HUNDREDS, and you could just pay to have your stuff massprinted, as long as the publisher didn't feel it'd harm their reputation irreparably (and yes, Irving absolutely had the money).
Which they all did. Because Irving didn't smear the Prophet or Islam in his biography.
Irving believed in his work.
So he spent twenty years traveling the anglophone world trying to find SOMEONE who'd print it.
Nobody.
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Eventually, closing in on his deathbed and despairing that his biography would never be published, he rewrote it to include regular disavowals and smears, so that it would be published at all.
The biography did very well. He was able to write a follow-up, covering The Prophet's disciples.
But, again, only with smears.
That's the environment of the era. That's how absolutely hellbent the entire anglophone world was to exclusively print racist bullshit.
And that's why the Great Man of Literature theory of history is GARBAGE.
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