So much for the more civilized apple trees (urbaniores, as Pliny calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted apple trees, at what ever season of the year,—so irregularly planted: sometimes two trees standing close together;
Classic Articles on Writing
Mark Twain’s Letter to The Secretary of the Treasury
Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances
On the Profession of Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson
The profession of letters has been lately debated in the public prints; and it has been debated, to put the matter mildly, from a point of view that was calculated to surprise
What Interests Readers
To interest readers is obviously the prime object in all popular writing. The basis of interest in the news story, the special feature article, and the short story is essentially the same. Whatever the average person likes to hear and see, whatever gives him
Submitting Your Story by Charles Raymond Barrett
Submitting Your Story Because literature is an art and you have a leaning toward it, do not therefore consider yourself a genius and so exempt from work. There is no royal road to success, and no one ever yet won a high place in the world of letters who did not earn it by the […]
How to begin a Letter by Lewis Carrol
If the Letter is to be in answer to another, begin by getting out that other letter and reading it through, in order to refresh your memory, as to what it is you have to answer,
The Devil by W.B. Yeats
My old Mayo woman told me one day that something very bad had come down the road and gone into the house opposite, and though she would not say what it was, I knew quite well.
Writers on Art: Percy B. Shelley on Raphael’s The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia
have seen a quantity of things here—churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place
W.B. Yeats on Where the Poet Lives
There is an old saying that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere. If that is true, the saint goes to the centre, the poet and artist to the ring where everything comes round again.
A Happy Hour’s Command by Walt Whitman
A Happy Hour’s Command by Walt Whitman Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1882.-If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-’65, Nature-notes of 1877-’81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by […]
Growth, Health, and Work by Walt Whitman
Growth, Health, and Work by Walt Whitman I develop’d (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16.) Our family at this period moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a long time, but recover’d. All these years I […]
Mark Twain’s Letter to Mrs. Grover Cleveland
To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington: Hartford, Nov. 6, 1887. My Dear Madam,—I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night when I was […]
Rules of Tragic Plot by Aristotle
Rules of Tragic Plot by Aristotle In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in […]
The Shrinkage of the Planet by Jack London
The Shrinkage of the Planet What a tremendous affair it was, the world of Homer, with its indeterminate boundaries, vast regions, and immeasurable distances. The Mediterranean and the Euxine were illimitable stretches of ocean waste over which years could be spent in endless wandering. On their mysterious shores were the improbable homes of impossible peoples. […]
An English Critic on Mark Twain
An English Critic on Mark Twain An English Critic on Mark Twain: Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. We have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter’s way […]