# Anonymity

Author: Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970

Genre: Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

Language: English

License: Public domain

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74818

Amazon editions: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Anonymity+Forster&tag=cyberlibrar00-20

## Summary

The question is more profound and even more literary than may appear. A poem for example: do we gain more or less pleasure from it when we know the name of the poet? The _Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens_, for example. No one knows who wrote _Sir Patrick Spens_. It comes to us out of the northern void like a breath of ice. Set beside it another ballad whose author is known--_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_. That, too, contains a tragic voyage and the breath of ice, but it is signed Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and we know a certain amount about this Coleridge. Coleridge signed other poems and knew other poets; he ran away from Cambridge; he enlisted as a Dragoon under the name of Trooper Comberba...

## Chapters

- [Part 1](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/anonymity-74818/chapters/1/index.md)
- [Part 2](https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/anonymity-74818/chapters/2/index.md)