Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
No more substantial or more charming volume of criticism has been published in our time. To say that this is the best book on the subject is probably true but it is more to the point to say that it is the only one' Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
The craft of fiction, not the art: they may be one and the same, the art and the craft, with no true working distinction to be drawn between them, and so indeed they are -- but how differently they sound Art is a winged word, neither to hold nor to bind, ever ready to fly away with a discussion that would fasten it to its own ground and to the work that bears its name. The homely note of the craft allows no such distractions; it holds you fast to the matter in hand, to the thing that has been made and the manner of its making; nor lets you forget that the whole of the matter is contained within the finished form of the thing, and that the form was fashioned by the craft. It is like Juliet's wanton, ever ready to twitch back the escaping bird, the bird of the loftier name, with its inveterate impulse to soar from its own sphere -- from the novelist's picture of life to life itself, from the world as he saw it to the world you see for yourself, and so to the rightness or wrongness of his ideas, the soundness or frailty of his opinions, the charm or disgrace of his nature. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.