Читать книгу Types of Prose Narratives. A Text-Book for the Story Writer онлайн

7 страница из 79

To say to how great an extent a writer and talker is indebted to his everyday working library is difficult. Like a sculptor to an excellent quarry, a teacher can indeed forget to give credit where credit is due, especially to the more general books of reference such as encyclopedias and histories of literature—Saintsbury, Chambers, Ticknor, Jusserand. I would speak of the "Standard Dictionary," that does all my spelling for me and not a little of my defining; and the "Encyclopedia Britannica," which in these days of special treatises is sometimes superciliously passed over, though it offers in its pages not only much valuable literary information, but some of that information in the form of very valuable literature. Next to these might be placed Dunlop's "History of Fiction;" and last, particular and occasional compilations like Brewer's and Blumentritt's, and criticism like Murray's, Keightley's and Newbigging's. Then there is the "World's Great Classics Series." Just how much I owe to these general texts I cannot perhaps tell definitely; though I am not conscious of borrowing where I have not given full credit. As I have said before, direct treatises on my subject are lacking; so I shall have to bear alone the brunt of criticism on the analysis, or the main body of the book. I know of no one else to blame.