The Project Gutenberg eBook, How to Fail in Literature, by Andrew Lang

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Title: How to Fail in Literature

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: May 11, 2005 [eBook #2566]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE***

Transcribed from the 1890 Field & Tuer edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE: A LECTURE BY ANDREW LANG

PREFACE

_This Lecture was delivered at the South Kensington Museum, in aid of the
College for Working Men and Women. As the Publishers, perhaps
erroneously, believe that some of the few authors who were not present
may be glad to study the advice here proffered, the Lecture is now
printed. It has been practically re-written, and, like the kiss which
the Lady returned to Rodolphe_, is revu, corrige, et considerablement
augmente.

A. L.

HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE

What should be a man's or a woman's reason for taking literature as a
vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, what sort of
ambition should possess them? These are natural questions, now that so
many readers exist in the world, all asking for something new, now that
so many writers are making their pens "in running to devour the way" over
so many acres of foolscap. The legitimate reasons for enlisting (too
often without receiving the shilling) in this army of writers are not far
to seek. A man may be convinced that he has useful, or beautiful, or
entertaining ideas within him, he may hold that he can express them in
fresh and charming language. He may, in short, have a "vocation," or
feel conscious of a vocation, which is not exactly the same thing. There
are "many thyrsus bearers, few mystics," many are called, few chosen.
Still, to be sensible of a vocation is something, nay, is much, for most
of us drift without any particular aim or predominant purpose. Nobody
can justly censure people whose chief interest is in letters, whose chief
pleasure is in study or composition, who rejoice in a fine sentence as
others do in a well modelled limb, or a delicately touched landscape,
nobody can censure