Category: Authors

First, be it understood, I make no claim To rank with those who bear a poet’s name: ‘Tis not enough to turn out lines complete, Each with its proper quantum of five feet; Colloquial verse a man may write like me, But (trust an author) ’tis not poetry. No; keep that name for genius, for […]

I have resumed my life of toil. I go to bed at six, directly after dinner. The animal digests and sleeps till midnight. Auguste makes me a cup of coffee, with which the mind goes at one flash (tout d’une traite) till midday. I rush to the printing-office to carry my copy and get my […]

I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trod the soil of the four quarters of the globe. After camping in Iroquois shelters and Arab tents, in the wigwams of the Hurons, amid the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Grenada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, in forests and among […]

A EULOGY OF RICHARDSON (The author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison.) Until the present day a novel was considered a frivolous tissue of fanciful events, the study of which was dangerous to our tastes and our morals. I much wish that some other name could be given to Richardson’s works, which, indeed, are […]

Comparatively speaking, the making of Henri III was speedy: when the plot was once clearly set out in my mind, I took barely two months to complete the work. I remember that in the interval between the shaping of the plot and the writing of the play, I went down to Villers-Cotterets for the shooting, […]

[The following words are addressed to Edward Garnett:] You no doubt have the gift of the `mot juste,’ of those sentences that are like a flash of limelight on the facade of a cathedral or a flash of lightning on a landscape when the whole scene and all the details leap up before the eye […]

THE RELATION OF THE AUTHOR TO HIS AUDIENCE At least these great artists of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries are agreed upon one thing, that the public, even in its most gracious mood, makes an ill task-master for the man of letters. It is worth the pains to ask why, and to attempt to show […]

Poetry is the gay science. The trait and test of the poet is that he builds, adds, and affirms. The critic destroys: the poet says nothing but what helps somebody; let others be distracted with cares, he is exempt. All their pleasures are tinged with pain. All his pains are edged with pleasure. The gladness […]

But the story contains admirable writing, and many clear evidences of a very delicate discrimination of character. It is delightful to find throughout that you have taken great pains with it besides, and have `gone at it’ with a perfect knowledge of the jolter-headedness of the conceited idiots who suppose that volumes are to be […]

COMPOSITION I have observed that, after writing a book, my mind always makes a great spring. I believe that the act of composition produces the same invigorating effect upon the mind which some exertion does upon the body. Even the writing of Manstein produced a revolution in my nature, which cannot be traced by any […]