Résumé
Résumé de L’Homme sensible
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À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will enjoy this if you like short, tender stories made of vivid scenes, a gentle hero, sharp portraits of English society, and a lively argument about whether kindness can survive among money.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Picture a hunting trip gone wrong. A dog points at bare ground, two men hurry across a field in the September heat, and the birds are already gone. That small letdown opens The Man of Feeling, a short novel by the Scottish writer Henry Mackenzie, first printed in 1771.
It tells of Harley, a shy country gentleman whose heart breaks at every sad tale. He travels to London to seek a lease on Crown land and meets beggars, impostors, swindlers and a ruined woman. You get the scenes in order and the argument about feeling that holds them together.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A torn manuscript and a gentle ghostFree
- 2Harley is shy, poor and badly advised
- 3London greets him with tricks and snubs
- 4Bedlam and the bitter philosopher
- 5Swindlers, a fallen woman and a grieving father
- 6Edwards and the ruined schoolhouse
- 7Love without words, in verse and in fragments
- 8Feeling against the world's cold sense
- 9A story told in scraps, with a sighing narrator
Point clé 1 sur 9
A torn manuscript and a gentle ghost
The novel opens with an author who goes shooting with a curate. Their dog, Rover, makes a false point, and the men rest near an old, melancholy house. A young lady with a book walks among the trees. She is the daughter of a neighbor named Walton.
The curate says the house once belonged to a man named Harley. A grave lodger the country people called The Ghost left a bundle of papers when he vanished. The curate found the handwriting dreadful, saw no logic in the pages, and began using them as wadding for his gun. The author takes what is left home.
That frame tells you the story has no tidy plot. It is a set of episodes, some missing, about a man whose only claim to attention is his heart. The narrator is warm, a little teasing, and ready to sigh over his own sentiment. Grief is real here, but so is gentle comedy.
The frame shows a tender book that wants you to feel before you judge.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 34,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 2 h 25 min
Questions about L’Homme sensible
What is The Man of Feeling about?
It follows Harley, a shy and kind country gentleman, on a trip to London to ask a baronet for a lease. He meets beggars, swindlers, a madhouse, and an old soldier, and tests his gentle heart against the world.
Who is Harley in The Man of Feeling?
Harley is the hero, a young gentleman of modest means whose shyness and fine feeling make him fit poorly into society. He weeps at suffering, gives away his money, and loves his neighbor Miss Walton without speaking of it.
What does sensibility mean in this novel?
Sensibility means a quick, tender response to the feelings of others. In the book it is shown through tears, blushes, and acts of generosity, and Mackenzie asks whether this response is a weakness or a form of wisdom.
Why is The Man of Feeling told in fragments?
Mackenzie presents the story as a manuscript damaged by a curate who used the pages as gun wadding. The gaps let him tell it in separate scenes, each a short test of Harley's heart, with numbered chapters that skip.
Is The Man of Feeling easy to read today?
It is short, with brief chapters, vivid scenes, and a warm, teasing narrator. Most chapters tell a single event, such as a visit to the madhouse or a stagecoach ride, so they are easy to follow one at a time.
Cite this edition
Mackenzie, Henry. The Man of Feeling. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-man-of-feeling.
Mackenzie, H. (2026). The man of feeling. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-man-of-feeling (Original work published 1771)
Mackenzie, Henry. The Man of Feeling. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-man-of-feeling.
@book{mackenzie2026man,
author = {Mackenzie, Henry},
title = {The Man of Feeling},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-man-of-feeling},
note = {First published 1771}
}
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