Percival Pollard's “The Bachelor in Fiction,” a review essay that appeared in The Bookman in 1900, begins by asserting the relative rarity of English literature which “concerns itself directly with bachelors.” Pollard admits that certain well-known examples of the literature of confirmed bachelorhood do spring to mind, counting among these Israel Zangwill's The Bachelors' Club, J. M. Barrie's When A Man's Single, and the “famous book” of “Ik Marvel,” the 1850 bestseller Reveries of a Bachelor, which was apparently so famous that, even in 1900, its title could be left unspecified. But Pollard, in keeping with his persona of the bibliophilic connoisseur, abjures discussion of these obvious instances: “My purpose here is to point not so much to the familiar, famous writings on the state of single blessedness, but to dally rather with certain volumes which the general public either forgets or passes by” (p. 146). The ensuing catalogue brings to light an impressive number of lost or lesser-known bachelor fictions of the 1890s, including Richard Harding Davis's Van Bibber, George Hibbard's The Governor, F. Hopkinson Smith's A Day at Laguerre's and Colonel Carter of Cartersville, Robert Grant's A Bachelor's Christmas, Edward Sandford Martin's Windfalls of Observation, Eugene Field's The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, and K. M. C. Meredith's Green Gates: An Analysis of Foolishness.