Literary Taste: How to Form It Essay by Arnold Bennett
Literary Taste: How to Form it: With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature Arnold Bennett , first published in 1909, with a revised edition by his friend Frank Swinnerton appearing in 1937.[ a]
Both the essay and the list were very influential, although Bennett's decision to include only books originally written in English (along with a handful of Latin works) makes it extremely insular compared with most other attempts at compiling a literary canon .[citation needed
Outline
Preface (unnumbered) (only found in Swinnerton edition) The Aim
Your Particular Case
Why a Classic is a Classic
Where to Begin
How to Read a Classic (using Charles Lamb 's Dream Children )
The Question of Style
Wrestling with an Author
System in Reading
Verse (Hazlitt 's On Poetry in General , Isaiah ch. 40, Wordsworth 's The Brothers , E. Browning 's Aurora Leigh
Broad Counsels
An English Library: Period I
An English Library: Period II
An English Library: Period III
An English Library: Period IV (possibly with appendix) (only found in Swinnerton edition)
Mental Stocktaking
Library
Period IV only appears in the edition by Swinnerton.
The symbol * denotes first edition only. The symbol † denotes second edition only.
Prose
Poetry
Prose
Poetry
Novelists
Sir Walter Scott : Waverley , The Heart of Midlothian Quentin Durward Redgauntlet Ivanhoe The Pirate The Antiquary
Thomas Love Peacock Mary Russell Mitford : Our Village Michael Scott : Tom Cringle's Log Frederick Marryat : The King's Own †, Mr Midshipman Easy John Galt : Annals of the Parish The Ayrshire Legatees Susan Ferrier : Marriage Douglas William Jerrold : Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures Edward Bulwer-Lytton : The Last Days of Pompeii Charles Lever : Harry Lorrequer Harrison Ainsworth : Rookwood †, The Tower of London George Borrow : Lavengro The Romany Rye The Bible in Spain Benjamin Disraeli : Sybil Coningsby William Makepeace Thackeray : Vanity Fair The History of Henry Esmond The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. Charles Dickens Charles Reade : The Cloister and the Hearth Anthony Trollope : The Warden Barchester Towers Framley Parsonage The Last Chronicle of Barset Charles Kingsley : Westward Ho! Henry Kingsley : Ravenshoe Charlotte Brontë , Emily Brontë ; Anne Brontë †Elizabeth Gaskell : Cranford Mary Barton North and South The Life of Charlotte Bronte George Eliot : Adam Bede Silas Marner The Mill on the Floss Middlemarch George Whyte-Melville : The Gladiators George Macdonald : Malcolm *, Sir Gibbie Wilkie Collins : The Woman in White The Moonstone R. D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone Samuel Butler : Erewhon The Way of All Flesh Laurence Oliphant : Altiora Peto *Margaret Oliphant : Salem Chapel Lewis Carroll : Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Through the Looking-Glass Joseph Henry Shorthouse : John Inglesant Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped (novel) The Master of Ballantrae The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables Virginibus Puerisque George Gissing : The Odd Women *, Thyrza †, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft †
Non-novelists
Charles Lamb Walter Savage Landor : Imaginary Conversations Leigh Hunt : Autobiography†, Essays and SketchesWilliam Cobbett William Hazlitt : Spirit of the Age *, The English Poets , The English Comic Writers , Table Talk †, The Plain Speaker †Francis Jeffrey : Essays from The Edinburgh Review Thomas de Quincey Sydney Smith : Selected Papers*George Finlay : Byzantine Empire *John G. Lockhart : Life of Scott *Agnes Strickland : Life of Queen Elizabeth *Hugh Miller : Old Red Sandstone *John Henry Newman : Apologia Pro Vita Sua Lord Macaulay : History of England , Essays A. P. Stanley : Memorials of Canterbury *Thomas Carlyle : The French Revolution: A History Cromwell , Sartor Resartus Heroes and Hero-Worship , Latter-Day Pamphlets Charles Darwin : The Origin of Species The Voyage of the Beagle Alexander William Kinglake : Eothen John Stuart Mill : Auguste Comte and Positivism On Liberty Representative Government †John Brown : Horae Subsecivae , Rab and his Friends Sir Arthur Helps : Friends in Council *
Mark Pattison : Life of Milton *F. W. Robertson : On Religion and Life *Benjamin Jowett : Interpretation of Scripture Alexander Smith : Dreamthorpe Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Women George Henry Lewes : Principles of Success in Literature *, Life of Goethe †Alexander Bain : Mind and Body James Anthony Froude : Short Studies on Great Subjects John Tyndall : Glaciers of the Alps Sir Henry Maine : Ancient Law
John Ruskin : Seven Lamps of Architecture , Sesame and Lilies , The Stones of Venice Herbert Spencer : First Principles , Essays on Education Sir Richard Francis Burton : Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca *, First Footsteps in East Africa †
John Hanning Speke : Sources of the Nile Thomas Henry Huxley : Man's Place in Nature , Lectures and Lay SermonsE. A. Freeman : Europe *William Stubbs : Early Plantagenets *Winwood Reade : The Martyrdom of Man †Walter Bagehot : Lombard Street Walter Pater : Imaginary Portraits , Marius the Epicurean Richard Holt Hutton : Cardinal Newman *Richard Jefferies : The Story of My Heart Sir John Seeley : Ecce Homo
David Masson : Thomas de Quincey *Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet : Life of Macaulay †John Richard Green : A Short History of the English People Sir Leslie Stephen : Pope *
Lord Acton : On the Study of History *Mandell Creighton : The Age of Elizabeth *Oscar Wilde †F. W. H. Myers : Wordsworth *, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death †Mark Rutherford : Pages from a Journal †
Poets
Novelists and dramatists
George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel The Egoist Evan Harrington , An Essay on Comedy , poemsThomas Hardy : The Dynasts Far from the Madding Crowd Jude the Obscure The Return of the Native Tess of the D'Urbervilles Rudyard Kipling : The Jungle Book Just So Stories Plain Tales from the Hills Many Inventions The Day's Work , Soldiers Three , Barrack-Room Ballads Henry James : Daisy Miller The Spoils of Poynton The Ambassadors George Moore : Confessions of a Young Man , Esther Waters The Brook Kerith George Bernard Shaw : Plays Pleasant , Plays Unpleasant , Man and Superman Saint Joan The Apple Cart Joseph Conrad : The Mirror of the Sea , Lord Jim Youth J. M. Barrie : The Admirable Crichton Dear Brutus , Margaret Ogilvy A Widow in Thrums Allan Monkhouse : Mary Broome Arthur Conan Doyle : The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes W. W. Jacobs : Many Cargoes H. G. Wells : The Time Machine The Wheels of Chance Tono-Bungay The History of Mr Polly Arnold Bennett : The Old Wives' Tale Lord Raingo , Books and Persons , The Truth about an Author John Galsworthy : The Forsyte Saga Somerset Maugham : Of Human Bondage Ashenden The Gentleman in the Parlour , plays (The Circle , The Constant Wife The Bread-Winner Elizabeth von Arnim : Vera Kenneth Grahame : The Wind in the Willows Saki : The Unbearable Bassington J. M. Synge : The Playboy of the Western World Harley Granville-Barker : Waste , The Voysey Inheritance Stanley Houghton : Hindle Wakes St. John Greer Ervine : The Wayward Man , John Ferguson A. A. Milne : Second Plays , The Day's Play P. G. Wodehouse : The Inimitable Jeeves Meet Mr Mulliner Oliver Onions : In Accordance with the Evidence J. D. Beresford : The Hampdenshire Wonder Henry Handel Richardson : Maurice Guest E. M. Forster : Howards End Compton Mackenzie : Carnival Hugh Walpole : The Dark Forest Francis Brett Young : Portrait of Clare D. H. Lawrence : Sons and Lovers The Rainbow Fantasia of the Unconscious , poemsKatherine Mansfield : The Garden Party Wyndham Lewis : Tarr Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway The Common Reader Naomi Mitchison : The Conquered R. H. Mottram : The Spanish Farm J. B. Priestley : Angel Pavement Stella Benson : The Little World Charles Langbridge Morgan : Portrait in a Mirror Aldous Huxley : Little Mexican Brave New World Jesting Pilate , stories, essays, poemsDavid Garnett : Lady into Fox A Man in the Zoo Henry Williamson : Tarka the Otter L. A. G. Strong : Tuesday Afternoons Evelyn Waugh : Decline and Fall Denis Johnston : The Moon in the Yellow River Seán O'Casey : Five Irish PlaysNorah Hoult : Poor Women H. E. Bates : Thirty Tales
Other prose
C. M. Doughty : Travels in Arabia Deserta W. H. Hudson : El Ombú , Birds and Men Morley Roberts : The Western Avernus Norman Douglas : South Wind , Old Calabria R. B. Cunninghame Graham : Rodeo , Mogreb el-Acksa Apsley Cherry-Garrard : The Worst Journey in the World David Bone : The Brassbounder H. M. Tomlinson : The Sea and the Jungle , Norman Douglas C. E. Montague : Disenchantment , Fiery Particles Havelock Ellis : Selected EssaysGraham Wallas : Human Nature in Politics G. Lowes Dickinson : A Modern Symposium W. R. Inge : Outspoken Essays Bertrand Russell : What I Believe , On Education , Roads to Freedom Alfred North Whitehead : Science and the Modern World Arthur Stanley Eddington : The Nature of the Physical World Hilaire Belloc : The Path to Rome , The Servile State , The Mercy of Allah , A Picked Company (picked by E. V. Lucas )G. K. Chesterton : The Flying Inn Charles Dickens , The Victorian Age in Literature , Autobiography, stories, essays, poemsMaurice Baring : Lost Diaries W. N. P. Barbellion : The Journal of a Disappointed Man Lytton Strachey : Queen Victoria Max Beerbohm Sir Edmund Gosse : Father and Son
Arthur Machen : Far Off Things Arthur Quiller-Couch : On the Art of Reading Alfred George Gardiner : Windfalls E. V. Lucas : Loiterers' Harvest , The Gentlest Art (ed.)Percy Lubbock : Earlham Robert Lynd : Books and Authors
Poets
The Penguin edition of 1938 included an appendix of books they were offering in paperback for sixpence a volume. Those not already appearing above were:
Explanatory Notes
^ Swinnerton's revised edition[ 1] Literary Taste that do not have any connection to Swinnerton list independent second editions, third editions,[ 2] [ 3]
References
External links
English
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