Charles Fenn

History of Financial Advice Collection. Fenn’s Compendium, which first appeared in 1837, reached its tenth edition in 1869. Acquiring the status of an institution, the volume was now under the editorship of the financial journalist Robert Lucas Nash. More than three times the size of the first edition, the Compendium collated a vast array of material relating to the financial markets, ranging from the prospectuses of various foreign loans to the rules and regulations of the Stock Exchange. Though the volume contained data on joint-stock companies, its main use was as a guide to colonial and foreign loans. Railway investors were likely to turn to one of the specialist guides available, such as Slaughter’s annual Railway Intelligence, while newcomers to investment were likely to try one of the more accessible guides such as Playford’s Practical Hints (1855). The Compendium continued to enjoy a significant readership, however, reaching its seventeenth and final edition in 1898.… (altro)

“Dick Francis on a motorbike” is how Charles Fenn describes his thriller. “But with more sex.” He’s right about the sex.

James Turner is a Cambridge graduate, one of the stars of his set on and off the rugby field. After graduating, though, he turns his back on career and fortune. Ten years later, when former friends are civil rights lawyers, dot com entrepreneurs and MI5 operatives, he is a motorcycle dispatch rider in London and openside flanker for a semi-professional local team. A reluctantly-attended reunion opens old wounds. Riding home afterwards he is chance witness to an attempted rape and rescues the victim. The two plot lines converge in a satisfactory way to a dramatic conclusion.

The comparison with Dick Francis is appropriate, and not simply because the story is told in the first person. The narrator is intelligent and self depreciating, and like Sid Halley and his colleagues he is underestimated by the opposition because of his occupation. Silly of them considering that he is six foot two and built as a rugby flanker should be. He is also, like a jockey, tough and focused. Having seen several colleagues killed in road accidents, his mantra is concentrate or die.

Unlike Francis, Fenn has a taste for philosophy, and one of the book’s themes is an ethical one – why choose to do the right thing in a world where God has been replaced by a blind watchmaker? The title conveys one answer: balance risk against benefit and select the path which offers the greatest benefit to the greatest number. Though these moral musings are fascinating in themselves, I found that they interrupted the action more than once. Fortunately the rugby player wins out over the philosopher and James Turner ends up storming through the visiting team’s defenders.

Oh yes, the sex. Well, there’s a fair amount of it and not much left to the imagination. I didn’t find it prurient or pornographic, though. There is tenderness and humour in the love-making, which is as it should be.

This is a book which I suspect celebrates the writer’s personal passions – motorbikes, rugby, philosophy and sex – and his enthusiasm shows on every page. An enjoyable and engaging read.… (altro)

History of Financial Advice Collection. Though the crash of 1825 had checked the spread of joint-stock enterprise, a boom in the mid-1830s brought them back into view. Focused on railways and banks, though also comprising many other sectors, the boom created new demand for information, which was answered by Charles Fenn. Alphabetical sections on everything from assurance companies to waterworks were complemented by details on US banks, canals, and railways. Reviews welcomed the comprehensiveness of the A-Z coverage, one newspaper praising the manual for containing “all that we could possibly look for in such a work, and a great deal more.” Despite going through three editions by 1840, the continuities between Fenn and earlier such manuals were pronounced. In particular, the emphasis remained on cataloguing information rather than giving opinions or advice. And because Fenn’s coverage of the joint-stock market was so wide-ranging, and because that market had grown so quickly, very little information was given on individual companies—sometimes little more than a date of formation, amount of capital, and the dividends paid. Though useful as a work of reference, such terseness would not equip budding investors with what they needed to begin operations.… (altro)