"If literature...can be described as journalism worth reading twice, then anecdotes can be described as gossip worth hearing twice," wrote Frank Muir in his London Times review of this book. The stories collected here--nearly 500 covering a span of 1300 years--have been heard and read many times over and have become almost a part of literature themselves. They add spice and dimension to literary works and illuminate the often shadowy characters of their authors. For instance, would the works of Samuel Johnson be half as interesting if his wit hadn't been recorded by his devoted biographer James Boswell? And would we understand T.S. Eliot's poems quite so well if we didn't know of his religious piety? James Sutherland has sifted through numerous memoirs and biographies to compile this rich and fascinating anthology of tall and short tales, moving portraits, and comic asides about the men and women of English letters.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
About the Editor:
James Sutherland, formerly Lord Northcliffe Professor Modern Literature at London University, is the editor of The Oxford Book of English Talk and the author of numerous books about literature.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Short Cut To Literary Erudition Since "The Anatomy of Melancholy",
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This review is from: The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (Hardcover)
I came to Amazon looking for a new copy of Sutherland's Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes because my original is disintegrating, and I cannot imagine being unable to dip into it at will and have my spirits lifted unfailingly. In the early to mid 1970's this New Yorker was at a college in a small market borough in the East Midlands of England. Many treasures of literature entered my life during those years, but none more enduring that this small volume. I have read and re-read it hundreds of times, either in order or opened to a page at random.
Not only is it consistently entertaining, it has proven uniquely educational. The odd and memorable stories it tells of the scribbling tribe have forever fixed the personalities of these artists, leading me to luminous authors I would never have encountered. It has also afforded me the unique pleasure of quoting a bon mot, sounding as if I had a great deal more education than I do- at least when it comes to literature. It used to be said that Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was a short cut to erudition, because it was so rich in quotations from authors from many sources. Nowadays almost nobody would recognize the allusions from Burton, so I nominate this book as the best short cut to sounding erudite. By the way, it is incomparably superior to the New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, which I have found to be an immense disappointment, notable primarily for smutty anecdotes that in a better time would have been called "unprintable". Sadly, in this age, nothing seems to fall under that description. Sutherland is from a different time, a time we may yet recover, once beauty and truth become valued once more.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Anecdotes about British literary figures- great and small,
By
This review is from: The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (Oxford paperbacks) (Paperback)
The great philosopher David Hume on his deathbed said to his doctor, " As I believe you would not choose to tell anything but the truth , you had better tell him that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish and as easily and cheerfully asmy best friends could desire.'
Sir Robert Walpole upon his retirement came to the Library and found himself unable to read. He said,"I have led a life of business so long, that i have lost my taste for reading, and now' what shall I do?" When Gibbon presented the second volume of his 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' to the Duke of Gloucestor brother of King George III the prince ungraciously responded with "Another damned thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, Eh!Mr. Gibbon" These are just three of hundreds of literary anecdotes collected in this volume about a very large list of British literary figures ranging from Shakespeare to Lord Stubbs, from the great to the very minor. A great deal of Literary history is contained in this volume with the passages often coming from the important writings of the subjects of the anecdotes themselves.
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