On the Art of Writing [Paperback]

Arthur Quiller-Couch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000 | ISBN-10: 0399500286 | ISBN-13: 978-0399500282

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill On the Difference between Verse and Prose You will forgive me, Gentlemen, that having in my second lecture encouraged you to the practice of verse as well as of prose, I seize the very next opportunity to warn you against confusing the two, which differ on some points essentially, and always so as to demand separate rules—or rather (since I am shy of the word "rules") a different concept of what the writer should aim at and what avoid. But you must, pray, understand that what follows will be more useful to the tiro in prose than to the tiro in verse; for while even a lecturer may help you to avoid writing prose in the manner of Milton, only the gods— and they hardly—can cure a versifier of being prosaic. We started upon a promise to do without scientific definitions; and in drawing some distinctions to-day between verse and prose I shall use only a few rough ones; good, as I hope, so far asthey go; not to be found contrary to your scientific ones, if ever, under another teacher you attain to them; yet for the moment used only as guides to practice, and pretending to be no more. Thus I go some way—though by no means all the way—towards defining literature when I remind you that its very name (litterae—letters) implies the written rather than the spoken word; that, for example, however closely they approximate one to the other as we trace them back, and even though we trace them back to identical beginnings, the writer—the man of letters— does to-day differ from the orator. There was a time, as you know, when the poet and the historian had no less than the orator, and in the most literal sense, to "get a hearing." Nay, he got it with more pains: for the orator had his senate-house or his law-court provided, whereas Thespis jogged co fairs in a cart, and the Muse of H...

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), who often published under the pen-name of 'Q', was one of the giants of early twentieth-century literature and literary criticism. A novelist and poet who was also a Professor of English, he helped to form the literary tastes of generations of literary students and scholars who came after him. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Perigee (January 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0399500286
• ISBN-13: 978-0399500282
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,532,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book that Inspired Helene Hanff's Charing Cross, July 8, 2007

By 

Fran Stewart "franstewart.com" (Hog Mountain, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On the Art of Writing (Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914) (Paperback)

This slender volume is the book that began Helene Hanff's journey -- a path that led eventually to her writing the 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD series. Because I loved her books, I wondered what the master who taught her might have had to say. All I knew of him was what I had learned through Ms. Hanff.

This series of lectures, delivered in England more than nine decades ago, sparkles with a dry wit that is utterly endearing. No wonder his students loved him. Still, for someone who is the product of a late-20th century education, I must admit I was appalled by my ignorance of the classical references he made, expecting that his students would follow them with ease. Not a light-weight book, despite its compact size.

His challenge to his students, put forth in the first lecture, was to become a person [he said a man, but the statement applies to all of us] "of unmistakable intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to choose the better and reject the worse." Not a bad goal for anyone, is it?

A word of warning. He quotes in Greek here and there -- and does not translate it, since all his students were expected to understand that language. Ditto Latin.

If you can manage only two chapters, try the first "Inaugural" and the last "On Style."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do Not Buy the General Books Edition!, October 14, 2009

By 

David Merkel "Aleph Blog" (Ellicott City, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: On the art of writing (Paperback)

Very good book -- but the edition published by General Books is sloppily put together, unformatted, missing large chunks of text, contains garbled and nonsense words. Buy a different edition!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great read!, April 7, 2008

By 

sew (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Art of Writing (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

I bought this with "Q's" On the Art of Reading. I'm halfway through this one and can't wait to start the other one. I'm constantly going back to review my old Latin/Greek HS and university readings and have enjoyed the process immensely.