A Wall Street Journal writer recently decided to seek out the financial lessons embedded in works by classic 19th-century authors like Tolstoy and Flaubert. It turns out that the great writers knew a thing or two about money: CSM
What do business books and 19th-century literature – seemingly polar opposites – have in common?
A lot, in turns out.
Money – and the social changes its possession or lack thereof effects – forms the backbone of so many works of literature that one Wall Street Journal writer decided to read the classics with an eye toward extracting financial lessons.
The result was a surprisingly insightful and timeless primer in understanding money.
“Money wreaks so much havoc in Victorian novels – arriving or departing almost magically in the opening pages – that they provide a kind of survey course in what not to do,” Jeremy Olshan writes in a piece titled “Novel Financial Lessons from Dickens, Flaubert, and Tolstoy.”
