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On the Art of Writing Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914
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278 pages
First published January 1, 1916
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About the author
Arthur Quiller-Couch
767 books67 followersSir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental "Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900" (later extended to 1918), and for his literary criticism. He guided the taste of many who never met him, including American writer Helene Hanff, author of 84 Charing Cross Road, its sequel, Q's Legacy, and the putatively fictional Horace Rumpole via John Mortimer, his literary amanuensis.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 3, 2018
I decided to read these century-old lectures because I was curious to check out the source of the dictum “murder your darlings,” made famous by Stephen King. The lectures contained some interesting insights mixed with stretches of what struck me as benign babbling.
Most jarring is Quiller-Couch’s invariable address to his listeners as “gentlemen.” A stark reminder that, although Cambridge had begun to permit women to attend lectures a decade or two previously, they were not allowed to sit for exams or take a degree. So they are not among Quiller-Couch’s addressees. No, he speaks to elite males in the making, whom Quiller-Couch will form by exposure to the “masculine, objective writers” he admires.
Not that I have much to quibble about with the authors he holds up for admiration and emulation, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Thomas Wyatt (which Quiller-Couch spells with one “t”). There are others he admires less, for example, Samuel Johnson and Wordsworth, but Jane Austen rates no mention and George Eliot but one, a passing mention not as an author but as a responsive reader.
Equally risible is his survey, spread over two lectures, of the lineage of English literature. He is as allergic to the notion that Chaucer owed anything to Beowulf or other Anglo-Saxon poetry (other than the language, no small matter!) as he is to the suggestion that Great Britain should be reckoned among the Teutonic nations. Context, I remind myself. He gave these lectures in 1913, when the sound of saber-rattling filled the air. And he is reacting to the equally suspect Romantic Nationalism of the generation before him.
Nevertheless, it strikes me as nothing less than cranky that he devotes a lengthy portion of one of twelve lectures to speculation that some Romans who settled in Britain may still have descendants. The fact that newest DNA evidence confirms this suspicion doesn’t change Quiller-Couch’s lack of demonstration that this has anything to do with the influence of the Greek-Roman tradition on English literature.
Balanced against these oddities are other things I did like. These include Quiller-Couch's instinctive mistrust of the “-isms” often used to lump writers into categories and his emphasis that language is living, ever-changing, and that therefore good style can’t be reduced to rules. On the other hand, it is a bit of a letdown to hear in the final lecture that good style is merely a matter of politeness toward your reader.
From the outset, he declares that he will aim to have students read great literature “absolutely,” by which he means the texts themselves in preference to commentary and other secondary literature. He does allow that, with certain highly allusive writers such as Milton, notes on the references might be necessary for beginning students.
Quiller-Couch seems confident that in this “absolute” encounter with the texts it will be possible to discern authorial intent. A century on, we are less sure, but he also seems to recognize the role of what is now called reader-response: “the success of [literature] depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author’s skill to give as on ours to receive.”
Quiller-Couch’s aim is not only that his students will learn to appreciate great literature, but that they will become, if not great, at least good writers. Although chary of rules, he does set out four hallmarks of good writing. Aim to write, he urges, with accuracy, perspicuity, persuasion, and appropriateness. He might have helped his case had he said “lucidity” or “clarity” instead of perspicuity. Perhaps he thought his formula would be more memorable if two words began with the prefix “per-” alongside two that began with “a.”
I also liked his suggestion that the key to the Dark Ages was the suppression of literature. This was not done because the church had something against it as literature, nor—at first—because it was voluptuous, but because it was imbued with the polytheistic religion of the Greeks and Romans, something the church had only recently and narrowly overcome.
His fifth lecture, on jargon, is lamentably as relevant now as it was then. He decries it not because it is ugly, but because it is “a dead thing, leading no-whither, meaning naught. There is wickedness in human speech, sometimes. You will detect it all the better for having ruled out all that it naughty.”
One of the things I liked most about these lectures: although Quiller-Couch has his favorites, as well as writers he doesn’t admire, he is charitable toward all. It is not easy to write, he stresses, and all struggled to express themselves in language. This earns his respect and merits ours. In spite of my criticisms of parts of this book, this respect is something I’m glad to accord Quiller-Couch as well.
He seems to bristle that Chesterton, in a review of one of Quiller-Couch’s books, calls his tone “avuncular.” I smiled when I read this since that’s an adjective that already crossed my mind before I reached that point. But that’s not all bad. I think I would have enjoyed an evening and a sherry with him. These lectures, however, because of their unevenness, can be passed over in favor of other good books on writing. It’s not a bad book—I enjoyed much of it—but it’s not essential.
Most jarring is Quiller-Couch’s invariable address to his listeners as “gentlemen.” A stark reminder that, although Cambridge had begun to permit women to attend lectures a decade or two previously, they were not allowed to sit for exams or take a degree. So they are not among Quiller-Couch’s addressees. No, he speaks to elite males in the making, whom Quiller-Couch will form by exposure to the “masculine, objective writers” he admires.
Not that I have much to quibble about with the authors he holds up for admiration and emulation, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Thomas Wyatt (which Quiller-Couch spells with one “t”). There are others he admires less, for example, Samuel Johnson and Wordsworth, but Jane Austen rates no mention and George Eliot but one, a passing mention not as an author but as a responsive reader.
Equally risible is his survey, spread over two lectures, of the lineage of English literature. He is as allergic to the notion that Chaucer owed anything to Beowulf or other Anglo-Saxon poetry (other than the language, no small matter!) as he is to the suggestion that Great Britain should be reckoned among the Teutonic nations. Context, I remind myself. He gave these lectures in 1913, when the sound of saber-rattling filled the air. And he is reacting to the equally suspect Romantic Nationalism of the generation before him.
Nevertheless, it strikes me as nothing less than cranky that he devotes a lengthy portion of one of twelve lectures to speculation that some Romans who settled in Britain may still have descendants. The fact that newest DNA evidence confirms this suspicion doesn’t change Quiller-Couch’s lack of demonstration that this has anything to do with the influence of the Greek-Roman tradition on English literature.
Balanced against these oddities are other things I did like. These include Quiller-Couch's instinctive mistrust of the “-isms” often used to lump writers into categories and his emphasis that language is living, ever-changing, and that therefore good style can’t be reduced to rules. On the other hand, it is a bit of a letdown to hear in the final lecture that good style is merely a matter of politeness toward your reader.
From the outset, he declares that he will aim to have students read great literature “absolutely,” by which he means the texts themselves in preference to commentary and other secondary literature. He does allow that, with certain highly allusive writers such as Milton, notes on the references might be necessary for beginning students.
Quiller-Couch seems confident that in this “absolute” encounter with the texts it will be possible to discern authorial intent. A century on, we are less sure, but he also seems to recognize the role of what is now called reader-response: “the success of [literature] depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author’s skill to give as on ours to receive.”
Quiller-Couch’s aim is not only that his students will learn to appreciate great literature, but that they will become, if not great, at least good writers. Although chary of rules, he does set out four hallmarks of good writing. Aim to write, he urges, with accuracy, perspicuity, persuasion, and appropriateness. He might have helped his case had he said “lucidity” or “clarity” instead of perspicuity. Perhaps he thought his formula would be more memorable if two words began with the prefix “per-” alongside two that began with “a.”
I also liked his suggestion that the key to the Dark Ages was the suppression of literature. This was not done because the church had something against it as literature, nor—at first—because it was voluptuous, but because it was imbued with the polytheistic religion of the Greeks and Romans, something the church had only recently and narrowly overcome.
His fifth lecture, on jargon, is lamentably as relevant now as it was then. He decries it not because it is ugly, but because it is “a dead thing, leading no-whither, meaning naught. There is wickedness in human speech, sometimes. You will detect it all the better for having ruled out all that it naughty.”
One of the things I liked most about these lectures: although Quiller-Couch has his favorites, as well as writers he doesn’t admire, he is charitable toward all. It is not easy to write, he stresses, and all struggled to express themselves in language. This earns his respect and merits ours. In spite of my criticisms of parts of this book, this respect is something I’m glad to accord Quiller-Couch as well.
He seems to bristle that Chesterton, in a review of one of Quiller-Couch’s books, calls his tone “avuncular.” I smiled when I read this since that’s an adjective that already crossed my mind before I reached that point. But that’s not all bad. I think I would have enjoyed an evening and a sherry with him. These lectures, however, because of their unevenness, can be passed over in favor of other good books on writing. It’s not a bad book—I enjoyed much of it—but it’s not essential.
July 2, 2020
For the price of a Dover book, you can feel as if you have gone back in time to the 1913-1914 school year at Cambridge as you read Arthur Quiller-Couch's lectures On the Art of Writing. What a treat!
If you are a G. K. Chesterton fan, the last chapter is fun.
I have just read a sermon by CS Lewis that was a perfect read as I finished the lectures . It is titled "Learning in War-Time", preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford in the fall of 1939. It is published in the book, The Weight of Glory.
If you are a G. K. Chesterton fan, the last chapter is fun.
I have just read a sermon by CS Lewis that was a perfect read as I finished the lectures . It is titled "Learning in War-Time", preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford in the fall of 1939. It is published in the book, The Weight of Glory.
September 21, 2020
This book is composed of author's lectures at Cambridge on literature.
And his style of talking is difficult to comprehend. Well, I would name it a twisted style.
Schopenhauer accused Hegel for his difficult language because Hegel was consistently was doing it in order to secure his job at Berlin State University.
Paradoxically , the more Hegel is not understood, the more students went to his curse rather than Schopenhauer.
I do not know if there is such motivation here.
And reader of this book would notice that he is proud of his style.
He sees this a how a noble and intellectual of his age should be writing and talking
One thing he emphasizes through out the book is that literature is an art, not a science.
So one should feel free to bring out his own style within basic rules. This is something I love.
Here is an example of his sentences.
" On what our Elizabethan literature owes to Classical revival hundreds of volumes have been written and hundreds more will be written; I will but remind you of what Spencer talked about with Gabriel Harvey, what Daniel disputed with Campion; that Marlowe tried to re-incarnate Machiavelli; that Johnson was a sworn Latinist and the 'tribe of Ben' a classical tribe; while, as for Shakespeare, go and reckon the proportion of Italian and Roman names in his dramatis prosonae. "
Book is made up of such sentences.
And I disliked his art.
And his style of talking is difficult to comprehend. Well, I would name it a twisted style.
Schopenhauer accused Hegel for his difficult language because Hegel was consistently was doing it in order to secure his job at Berlin State University.
Paradoxically , the more Hegel is not understood, the more students went to his curse rather than Schopenhauer.
I do not know if there is such motivation here.
And reader of this book would notice that he is proud of his style.
He sees this a how a noble and intellectual of his age should be writing and talking
One thing he emphasizes through out the book is that literature is an art, not a science.
So one should feel free to bring out his own style within basic rules. This is something I love.
Here is an example of his sentences.
" On what our Elizabethan literature owes to Classical revival hundreds of volumes have been written and hundreds more will be written; I will but remind you of what Spencer talked about with Gabriel Harvey, what Daniel disputed with Campion; that Marlowe tried to re-incarnate Machiavelli; that Johnson was a sworn Latinist and the 'tribe of Ben' a classical tribe; while, as for Shakespeare, go and reckon the proportion of Italian and Roman names in his dramatis prosonae. "
Book is made up of such sentences.
And I disliked his art.
June 23, 2019
This is a set of lectures given at Cambridge in the early twentieth century, the kind of information which may put a busy entertainment minded student right to sleep. I took a few months to mull and study his lectures and will go back to this book again. He delivers his information with the ease of a person not only classically trained, but as one who has read and written voraciously and critically.
July 28, 2015
On the Art of Writing (1916) by Arthur Quiller-Couch contains a set of lectures given at the University of Cambridge from January 29, 1913 to January 28, 1914, and is best summed up when in November 1915 Arthur writes in the preface, “It amounts to this—Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practiced.”
In these lectures Arthur holds one of the earliest quotes often repeated by university writing professors around the world—“murder your darlings” (p 203)—which is also restated in Style: The Art of Writing Well (1955) by F.L. Lucas, who had studied at Cambridge and pays tribute to Arthur in his title.
Now let’s compare the two passages between the Mentor, who was the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the time, and the Pupil:
“I have spent years saying: ‘Your generalization is beautifully epigrammatic,’” writes Lucas, “I understand that you could not bear to leave it unwritten. But consider all these exceptions to it. You knew them. If you could not bear to kill your darling, why not introduce it with the words ‘It might be said’, and then yourself point out the fatal objections? Then you could serve Beauty and Truth at once. At least you could have inserted ‘possibly’ or ‘sometimes’ into this sweeping pronouncement” (Style: The Art of Writing Well p 131).
And now for Arthur to chime in:
“Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings’” (On the Art of Writing p 203).
And it is this sort of advice from the sage that one can find in Arthur’s lectures, which range from differentiating between Verse and Prose, defining Jargon, extrapolating on the lineage of English literature, and later followed by criticisms involving English literature studied at universities in the early 1900s.
In Arthur’s inaugural lecture, however, he offers up some of the deepest comments why the people in general, in direct antagonism to the “ideal State” which would oppose Plato and contain no Literature and in turn no Professors of Literature, should not abandon the fine arts so easily:
“By consent of all, Literature is a nurse of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even better than Bacon’s; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for which Heaven designed him” (p 4-5).
As it was over a century ago, Arthur’s advice is as relevant today when “complete” men and women are needed in all aspects of society; especially where blind greed for profits fuel higher education in this new millennium, ran by bankers and executives who studied more spreadsheets than they did novels, thereby lacking in “noble natures” as so many artists and readers have acquired over the years of patient deliberation and kind heartedness to the Truth and Beauty rather than to Margin Gains and Sexual Corruption.
As one example, no one need mention (but I will—I must) the UK’s House of Lords’ Chairman and Deputy Speaker Lord Sewel, who was nicknamed “Lord Coke” because the 69-year-old was filmed snorting cocaine off the breasts of two prostitutes, and that is where the common man’s taxes go each year: up the nostrils of a fat politician bought by Corporate Greed.
Arthur Quiller-Couch—warning as much in his opening lecture—somehow understood and expected a correlation between a lack of virtue and morals with the lack of studying literature. But for most of my readers, this will come as no surprise.
Much like what is lost in expectation from politicians these days (like having a loyal code to ethics and morality, as an example), words also become twisted over time and sooner or later ideas and fragments of ideas become something new and foreign instead what once used to be the norm. Like a prophet, Arthur warns us of the dangers higher education would face in an ever growing world of change:
“Yet I do maintain that if we go on multiplying Universities we shall not increase the joy,” writes Arthur in his eleventh lecture during a cold Wednesday on December 3, 1913: “that the reign of two-penny saints lies not far off and will soon lie within measurable distance; and that it will be a pestilent reign. As we saw in our last lecture the word ‘University’—Universitas—had, in its origin, nothing to do with Universality: it meant no more than a Society, organised (as it happened) to promote learning. But words, like institutions, often rise above their beginnings, and in time acquire a proud secondary connotation” (p 195).
It is true the original universities were not established to teach Literature but were far different institutions than the ones we find today when students can study Swimming, Fencing, Cinema, Fine Arts and the like. Even Arthur admits as much when he says, “our Universities were not founded for the study of literature,” and he goes on to state that the literatures in Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese preluded the English form, and Latin arriving before then in 1869 (p 187).
The more popular subjects which gained professorships in Cambridge as early as 1540 included Divinity, Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, Greek (p 185). In the following years the university would incorporate the following: Moral Philosophy (1683); Music (1684); Chemistry (1702); Astronomy (1704); Anatomy (1707); Geology (1727); and finally in 1910 a Chair of English Literature would be established (p 185-186). No wonder the top industries for some of the highest income earners include corrupted lawyers and bankers which excluded any study in the “noble natures” as discussed previously by Arthur.
Civilization is a corrupted, spoiled toddler who throws tantrums in the scope of global war and genocide, and we should expect that babe to grow and mature. Up until 1900 or so, religion and law dominated scopes of study—and we still wonder why the world is in the state it is in. Because of faith in their religion, Christian and Islamic extremists persecute one another while bankers and lawyers fund wars and cripple economies with their failure to see beyond the scope of profits and gain.
Yet, Arthur is wise enough to know the truth in even the deepest and most subtle of topics pertaining to Literature and Religion when he confesses:
“I would not have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what happened; as I would have you remember that if the Church killed literature, she—one may say, she alone—kept it alive” (p 177).
Arthur does come to elaborate on this enigmatic debate that has existed for centuries between Literature and Religion, the two fully clashing to summon the Dark Ages from the hells of human consciousness:
“If we grasp this, that the old literature as packed with the old religion, and not only packed with it but permeated by it, we have within our ten fingers the secret of the ‘Dark Ages,’ the real reason why the Christian Fathers fought down literature and almost prevailed to the point of stamping it out.
“They hated it, not as literature; or at any rate, not to begin with; nor, to begin with, because it happened to be voluptuous and they austere: but they hated it because it held in its very texture, not to be separated, a religion over which they had hardly triumphed, a religion actively inimical to that of Christ, inimical to truth; so that for the sake of truth and in the name of Christ they had to fight it, accepting no compromise, yielding no quarter, foreseeing no issue save that one of the twain—Jupiter or Christ, Deus Optimus Maximus or the carpenter’s son of Nazareth—must go under” (p 170).
And regardless of his thoughts on the reasons for the Dark Ages, Arthur lists his top three examples of supreme writing which should be studied by every student earnest in literature, and they include the Bible in the Authorised Version, Shakespeare’s works, and Homer, the last ranking first of all three examples (p 166).
Arthur’s lectures are highly enlightening and range over history and politics and examples of literature from Ovid, the Renaissance, Chaucer, Petrarch and Dante to Pliny and Latin and Virgil’s famous apostrophe: “Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra”; stemming from the translated praise to Mother Italy, “But neither the forests of Media, that richest country, nor the beautiful Ganges, and Hermus, turbid with golden sands, can match the praises of Italy” (p 136).
On every page and in every lecture Arthur expresses his love and admiration for writing and for literature. He finally comes to warn his listeners, then and now, of the importance in considering Literature as a form of art rather than belonging to the modes of science:
“Literature is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be applied,” writes Arthur in his first lecture, echoing his words in the preface, “It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author’s skill to give as on ours to receive” (p 14).
And Arthur ends his series of lectures at Cambridge by doing his best to define and summarize his comments on “style”:
“This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion…
“It comes of endeavoring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself—of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best” (p 214).
That is all anyone can really ask of you: to love what you do and to do what you love well, with little recognition of praise and applause.
Writing well and having great style has nothing to do with competition or being better than others.
Writing well and having style is about dedicating one’s life to the “art” of creating literature and being content with one’s “loyalty to the best”, stemming from the heart and the head.
This is one lesson of many from Arthur Quiller-Couch we should all plan to carry with us out into the world as well: to be loyal to our best and to have no hesitations about doing so.
In these lectures Arthur holds one of the earliest quotes often repeated by university writing professors around the world—“murder your darlings” (p 203)—which is also restated in Style: The Art of Writing Well (1955) by F.L. Lucas, who had studied at Cambridge and pays tribute to Arthur in his title.
Now let’s compare the two passages between the Mentor, who was the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the time, and the Pupil:
“I have spent years saying: ‘Your generalization is beautifully epigrammatic,’” writes Lucas, “I understand that you could not bear to leave it unwritten. But consider all these exceptions to it. You knew them. If you could not bear to kill your darling, why not introduce it with the words ‘It might be said’, and then yourself point out the fatal objections? Then you could serve Beauty and Truth at once. At least you could have inserted ‘possibly’ or ‘sometimes’ into this sweeping pronouncement” (Style: The Art of Writing Well p 131).
And now for Arthur to chime in:
“Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings’” (On the Art of Writing p 203).
And it is this sort of advice from the sage that one can find in Arthur’s lectures, which range from differentiating between Verse and Prose, defining Jargon, extrapolating on the lineage of English literature, and later followed by criticisms involving English literature studied at universities in the early 1900s.
In Arthur’s inaugural lecture, however, he offers up some of the deepest comments why the people in general, in direct antagonism to the “ideal State” which would oppose Plato and contain no Literature and in turn no Professors of Literature, should not abandon the fine arts so easily:
“By consent of all, Literature is a nurse of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even better than Bacon’s; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for which Heaven designed him” (p 4-5).
As it was over a century ago, Arthur’s advice is as relevant today when “complete” men and women are needed in all aspects of society; especially where blind greed for profits fuel higher education in this new millennium, ran by bankers and executives who studied more spreadsheets than they did novels, thereby lacking in “noble natures” as so many artists and readers have acquired over the years of patient deliberation and kind heartedness to the Truth and Beauty rather than to Margin Gains and Sexual Corruption.
As one example, no one need mention (but I will—I must) the UK’s House of Lords’ Chairman and Deputy Speaker Lord Sewel, who was nicknamed “Lord Coke” because the 69-year-old was filmed snorting cocaine off the breasts of two prostitutes, and that is where the common man’s taxes go each year: up the nostrils of a fat politician bought by Corporate Greed.
Arthur Quiller-Couch—warning as much in his opening lecture—somehow understood and expected a correlation between a lack of virtue and morals with the lack of studying literature. But for most of my readers, this will come as no surprise.
Much like what is lost in expectation from politicians these days (like having a loyal code to ethics and morality, as an example), words also become twisted over time and sooner or later ideas and fragments of ideas become something new and foreign instead what once used to be the norm. Like a prophet, Arthur warns us of the dangers higher education would face in an ever growing world of change:
“Yet I do maintain that if we go on multiplying Universities we shall not increase the joy,” writes Arthur in his eleventh lecture during a cold Wednesday on December 3, 1913: “that the reign of two-penny saints lies not far off and will soon lie within measurable distance; and that it will be a pestilent reign. As we saw in our last lecture the word ‘University’—Universitas—had, in its origin, nothing to do with Universality: it meant no more than a Society, organised (as it happened) to promote learning. But words, like institutions, often rise above their beginnings, and in time acquire a proud secondary connotation” (p 195).
It is true the original universities were not established to teach Literature but were far different institutions than the ones we find today when students can study Swimming, Fencing, Cinema, Fine Arts and the like. Even Arthur admits as much when he says, “our Universities were not founded for the study of literature,” and he goes on to state that the literatures in Arabic, Sanskrit and Chinese preluded the English form, and Latin arriving before then in 1869 (p 187).
The more popular subjects which gained professorships in Cambridge as early as 1540 included Divinity, Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, Greek (p 185). In the following years the university would incorporate the following: Moral Philosophy (1683); Music (1684); Chemistry (1702); Astronomy (1704); Anatomy (1707); Geology (1727); and finally in 1910 a Chair of English Literature would be established (p 185-186). No wonder the top industries for some of the highest income earners include corrupted lawyers and bankers which excluded any study in the “noble natures” as discussed previously by Arthur.
Civilization is a corrupted, spoiled toddler who throws tantrums in the scope of global war and genocide, and we should expect that babe to grow and mature. Up until 1900 or so, religion and law dominated scopes of study—and we still wonder why the world is in the state it is in. Because of faith in their religion, Christian and Islamic extremists persecute one another while bankers and lawyers fund wars and cripple economies with their failure to see beyond the scope of profits and gain.
Yet, Arthur is wise enough to know the truth in even the deepest and most subtle of topics pertaining to Literature and Religion when he confesses:
“I would not have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what happened; as I would have you remember that if the Church killed literature, she—one may say, she alone—kept it alive” (p 177).
Arthur does come to elaborate on this enigmatic debate that has existed for centuries between Literature and Religion, the two fully clashing to summon the Dark Ages from the hells of human consciousness:
“If we grasp this, that the old literature as packed with the old religion, and not only packed with it but permeated by it, we have within our ten fingers the secret of the ‘Dark Ages,’ the real reason why the Christian Fathers fought down literature and almost prevailed to the point of stamping it out.
“They hated it, not as literature; or at any rate, not to begin with; nor, to begin with, because it happened to be voluptuous and they austere: but they hated it because it held in its very texture, not to be separated, a religion over which they had hardly triumphed, a religion actively inimical to that of Christ, inimical to truth; so that for the sake of truth and in the name of Christ they had to fight it, accepting no compromise, yielding no quarter, foreseeing no issue save that one of the twain—Jupiter or Christ, Deus Optimus Maximus or the carpenter’s son of Nazareth—must go under” (p 170).
And regardless of his thoughts on the reasons for the Dark Ages, Arthur lists his top three examples of supreme writing which should be studied by every student earnest in literature, and they include the Bible in the Authorised Version, Shakespeare’s works, and Homer, the last ranking first of all three examples (p 166).
Arthur’s lectures are highly enlightening and range over history and politics and examples of literature from Ovid, the Renaissance, Chaucer, Petrarch and Dante to Pliny and Latin and Virgil’s famous apostrophe: “Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra”; stemming from the translated praise to Mother Italy, “But neither the forests of Media, that richest country, nor the beautiful Ganges, and Hermus, turbid with golden sands, can match the praises of Italy” (p 136).
On every page and in every lecture Arthur expresses his love and admiration for writing and for literature. He finally comes to warn his listeners, then and now, of the importance in considering Literature as a form of art rather than belonging to the modes of science:
“Literature is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be applied,” writes Arthur in his first lecture, echoing his words in the preface, “It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author’s skill to give as on ours to receive” (p 14).
And Arthur ends his series of lectures at Cambridge by doing his best to define and summarize his comments on “style”:
“This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion…
“It comes of endeavoring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself—of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best” (p 214).
That is all anyone can really ask of you: to love what you do and to do what you love well, with little recognition of praise and applause.
Writing well and having great style has nothing to do with competition or being better than others.
Writing well and having style is about dedicating one’s life to the “art” of creating literature and being content with one’s “loyalty to the best”, stemming from the heart and the head.
This is one lesson of many from Arthur Quiller-Couch we should all plan to carry with us out into the world as well: to be loyal to our best and to have no hesitations about doing so.
February 7, 2025
Before Luc Sante became Lucy, he wrote a book called Murder All Your Darlings It may be he believed this was writing advice from William Faulkner. Wrong.
Here’s Quiller-Couch, from this book: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it —whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.' What he’s referring to is the removal of extraneous ornament as an element of style.
Several timeists have cavilled at the author’s exclusive use of masculine pronouns. Try fastforwarding to now. Politicians are unable to define women, and the Democrat Party has added Ze, Xie, Ver, Per, E, Fae, Elle and others as personal pronouns. We’re so much more sane now. Not.
Although Quiller-Couch’s book is titled ‘On the Art of Writing’ it’s much more. Topics like prose compared to poetry, jargon, or literature are also covered. It's a thought provoking read.
Here’s Quiller-Couch, from this book: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it —whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.' What he’s referring to is the removal of extraneous ornament as an element of style.
Several timeists have cavilled at the author’s exclusive use of masculine pronouns. Try fastforwarding to now. Politicians are unable to define women, and the Democrat Party has added Ze, Xie, Ver, Per, E, Fae, Elle and others as personal pronouns. We’re so much more sane now. Not.
Although Quiller-Couch’s book is titled ‘On the Art of Writing’ it’s much more. Topics like prose compared to poetry, jargon, or literature are also covered. It's a thought provoking read.
May 2, 2022
In his new book Critical Revolutionaries (2022) Terry Eagleton gives the reader a constellation of UK formalists and "new critics" rebelling against belles lettrists and indulgers in the use of intentional and affective fallacies to toast or lambast works of written art.
On the Art of Writing (1913) by Quiller-Couch is an example of one of the works Eagleton's revolutionary critics were rebelling against.
Q. writes: "....constantly aiming at the concrete, at the study of such definite beauties as we can see presented in print under our eyes; always seeking the author's intention, but eschewing, for the present at any rate, all general definitions and theories, through the sieve of which the particular achievement of genius is so apt to slip."
On the Art of Writing (1913) by Quiller-Couch is an example of one of the works Eagleton's revolutionary critics were rebelling against.
Q. writes: "....constantly aiming at the concrete, at the study of such definite beauties as we can see presented in print under our eyes; always seeking the author's intention, but eschewing, for the present at any rate, all general definitions and theories, through the sieve of which the particular achievement of genius is so apt to slip."
January 4, 2021
Interesting and witty
Want to read
December 17, 2023Areopagus
Currently reading
May 10, 2024
October 30, 2025
A series of lectures, half of them quotes. Some good stuff. I would have slept through his class.
June 4, 2014
Many people have heard the advice to writers to 'murder your darlings,' but few know the source. It is commonly attributed to Stephen King. This is amusing because when he quotes the phrase in King's book On Writing, he gives credit to the source, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. This collection of addresses to the students of Cambridge University 1913-1914, Sir Arthur covers many topics of interest to writers. The collection is free on Kindle, and I recommend to writers and readers who are interested in the process of producing good writing.
October 8, 2013
While dated in some aspects, his grasp of the subject and his art in delivering it makes me wish I could have sat and heard these lectures delivered, not simply read them in a book. Definitely a future influence in my attempts at writing.
February 24, 2008
The best way to learn to write is to read good literature and to write. However, the author gives some excellent advice. Also read "On the Art of Reading"
January 23, 2009
Fascinating.
November 7, 2010
It started really interesting then got boring then I lost all interest in it.
May 1, 2018
The print was so miniscule and the writing so pedantic that I abandoned reading this.
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