The Oxford Book of Literary AnecdotesJames Runcieman Sutherland Oxford University Press, 1975 - 382 pages If an anecdote is to live beyond its own day, it must not only be worth the telling but be well told, and from over a thousand years of memoirs, reminiscences, and letters, Professor Sutherland has gathered almost five hundred that meet these demanding criteria. Here are comic, poignant, and revealing stories by or about not only those famous for their eccentricity, forthrightness, and wit -- Johnson, Scott, Henry James, Wilde and Shaw -- but also almost every major figure in English literature and a host of minor ones. We hear of Bede and David Hume and Sterne on their deathbeds, Milton's body being disinterred and his bones pillaged by curio-hunters, and Shelley's body being cremated on the beach near Viareggio, John Stubbs (author of a pamphlet that had angered Queen Elizabeth) condemned to have his right hand cut off and lifting his hat with his left hand crying 'God save the Queen!', Sir Walter Scott secreting in his coat-tails the glass out of which George IV had just drunk a toast, and then sitting down and breaking it, Ronald Firbank entertained to a luxurious tea at Oxford by Siegfried Sassoon, and nibbling a single grape. Professor Sutherland's anthology offers an often affecting, always entertaining corrective to the familiar outlines of literary history. |
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Page 54
... Lord Carteret , the new Lord Lieutenant , arrived in Ireland , and on the 27th he issued a proclamation offering a reward of £ 300 for a discovery of the authorship of the fourth letter . ] THE day after the Proclamation was issued out ...
... Lord Carteret , the new Lord Lieutenant , arrived in Ireland , and on the 27th he issued a proclamation offering a reward of £ 300 for a discovery of the authorship of the fourth letter . ] THE day after the Proclamation was issued out ...
Page 64
... Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste than really possessed of it . When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad , that Lord ' desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house ...
... Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste than really possessed of it . When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad , that Lord ' desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house ...
Page 94
... Lord Kames had a sovereign contempt for each other's studies and works . . . . Soon after the Elements of Criticism were published , Lord Kames met Monboddo , then at the Bar , on the street . ' Well , ' said he , ' have you read my ...
... Lord Kames had a sovereign contempt for each other's studies and works . . . . Soon after the Elements of Criticism were published , Lord Kames met Monboddo , then at the Bar , on the street . ' Well , ' said he , ' have you read my ...
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