SOURCE: “The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani: Henry Fuller's Not-So-Elusive Anatomy,” in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 50, No. 2, 1996, pp. 147-63.

In the following essay, Burns underscores the ironic and satirical voice in Fuller's The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani.

Satire is a sort of Glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's Face but their Own; which is the chief reason for that kind Reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Jonathan Swift

The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani creates some interesting dilemmas for the student of literature. Although Fuller's first book enjoyed considerable success, generating four editions in the first two years following its initial publication, the response to it was as ambivalent in judgment of its form as it was appreciative of its aesthetic merit. In 1892, the year of the novel's fourth revised edition, Agnes Repplier discussed The Chevalier with admiration, but...