Literary Taste: How to Form It With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature

Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors....

In discussing the value of particular books, I have heard people say-- people who were timid about expressing their views of literature in the presence of literary men: "It may...

There is a word, a "name of fear," which rouses terror in the heart of the vast educated majority of the English-speaking race. The most valiant will fly at the mere utterance o...

In the latter half of the period the question of copyright affects our scheme to a certain extent, because it affects prices. Fortunately it is the fact that no single book of r...

Let us begin experimental reading with Charles Lamb. I choose Lamb for various reasons: He is a great writer, wide in his appeal, of a highly sympathetic temperament; and his fi...

The attitude of the average decent person towards the classics of his own tongue is one of distrust--I had almost said, of fear. I will not take the case of Shakespeare, for Sha...

Having disposed, so far as is possible and necessary, of that formidable question of style, let us now return to Charles Lamb, whose essay on *Dream Children* was the originatin...

At the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will compl...

I wish particularly that my readers should not be intimidated by the apparent vastness and complexity of this enterprise of forming the literary taste. It is not so vast nor so...

The large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not qu...

You have now definitely set sail on the sea of literature. You are afloat, and your anchor is up. I think I have given adequate warning of the dangers and disappointments which...

I have now set down what appear to me to be the necessary considerations, recommendations, exhortations, and dehortations in aid of this delicate and arduous enterprise of formi...

of that very great philosopher Roger Bacon, of whom this isle ought to be prouder than it is. To this rule, however, I have been constrained to make a few exceptions. Sir Thomas...

After dealing with the formation of a library of authors up to John Dryden, I must logically arrange next a scheme for the period covered roughly by the eighteenth century. Ther...

AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD I* (*For much counsel and correction in the matter of editions and prices I am indebted to my old and valued friend, Charles Young, head of the firm o...

in the chain of development. For example, nearly all the productions of authors between Chaucer and the beginning of the Elizabethan period, such as Gower, Hoccleve, and Skelton...