Literary Taste: How to Form It
Essay by Arnold Bennett
Literary Taste: How to Form it Arnold Bennett , first published in 1909, with a revised edition by his friend Frank Swinnerton appearing in 1937. It includes a long list of recommended books, every item individually costed.
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
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
Library
Period IV only appears in the second 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:
External links
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