Classic book
Encyclopedia
A classic book is a book
accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy, either through an imprimatur such as being listed in any of the Western canon
s or through a reader's own personal opinion. The term itself is closely related to Western Canon
and to various college/university Senior Comprehensive Examination Reading Lists. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino
to Mark Twain
and the related questions of "Why Read the Classics?" and "What Is a Classic?" have been essayed by authors from different genres and eras (Calvino, T. S. Eliot
, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
). The ability of a classic book to be reinterpreted, to seemingly be renewed in the interests of generations of readers succeeding its creation, is a theme that is seen in the writings of literary critics including Michael Dirda
, Saint-Beuve and Ezra Pound
.
said in his essay “Why Read the Classics?” that “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say” and comes to the crux of personal choice in this matter when he says (italics in the original translation): “Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.”The essay "Why Read the Classics?" is available in two different anthologies. It was first published in 1980/82 in the Italian as a chapter in "The Uses of Literature" (in 1986 in the English translation) and then re-published in the posthumous collection titled "Why Read the Classics?" Consideration of what makes a literary work a classic is for Calvino ultimately a personal choice, and, constructing a universal definition of what constitutes a Classic Book seems to him to be an impossibility, since, as Calvino says “There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics.”
What actually makes a work of literature a ‘classic book’ is not just a consideration of extensively published authors. In 1920, Fannie M. Clark, a teacher at the Rozelle School in East Cleveland, Ohio, predates Calvino’s similar conclusions by 60 years when she also essayed the question of what makes a book a ‘classic’ in her article “Teaching Children to Choose” in The English Journal
, Volume 9, No. 3, “The Official Organ of the National Council of Teachers of English”
Over the course of her essay Clark considers the question of what makes a piece of literature a classic and why the idea of “the classics” is important to society as a whole. Clark says that “teachers of English have been so long trained in the ‘classics’ that these ‘classics’ have become to them very much like the Bible, for the safety of which the rise of modern science causes such unnecessary fears.” She goes on to say that among the sources she consulted was a group of eighth-graders when she asked them the question: “What do you understand by the classics in literature?” Two of the answers Clark received were “Classics are books your fathers give you and you keep them to give to your children” and “Classics are those great pieces of literature considered worthy to be studied in English classes of high school or college”. Calvino agrees with the Ohio educator when he states “Schools and universities ought to help us understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite.” Clark and Calvino come to a similar conclusion that when a literary work is analyzed for what makes it 'classic', that in just the act of analysis or as Clark says "the anatomical dissection", the reader can end up destroying the unique pleasure that mere enjoyment a work of literature can hold.
While blogging on the website guardian.co.uk
in 2009, Chris Cox echoes Twain’s ‘classic’ sentiments of 1900 and Bennett’s witticism about classic books when he opined on the Guardian.Co “Books Blog” that there are actually two kinds of “classic novels”:
The first are those we know we should have read, but probably have not. These are generally the books that make us burn with shame when they come up in conversation…The second kind, meanwhile, are those books that we've read five times, can quote from on any occasion, and annoyingly push on to other people with the words: "You have to read this. It's a classic."
” are closely related concepts that can confuse the student of literature but that are not necessarily each identical with the other. “Western canon” refers to a list of books considered to be “essential” and is presented in a variety of ways. It can be published as a collection (such as Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classics
, Modern Library
, Everyman's Library
, Great Books of the Western World
), presented as a list of books with an academic’s imprimatur (such as Harold Bloom
's) or be the official reading list of an institution of higher learning(such as St. John’s College Academic Program “The Reading List” or Rutgers University
’s “Reading List: Senior Comprehensive Examination”).
In 1850 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
(1804–1869) stated his answer to the question “What is a Classic?” ("Qu'est-ce qu'un classique?") :
“The idea of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition, fashions and transmits itself, and endures…. A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.”
In this same essay Sainte-Beuve quoted Goethe (referring to the 'classics' concept)
The concept of 'the classic' was a theme of T.S. Eliot's literary criticism as well. In The Sacred Wood
he thought that one of the reasons "Dante is a classic, and Blake only a poet of genius" because of "the concentration resulting from a framework of mythology and theology and philosophy". (In commenting about Eliot's influence, Professor Jan Gorak stated that "the idea of a canon has become intertwined with the idea of the classic, an idea that T.S. Eliot tried to revitalize for the 'modern experiment'".) In echoes of Sainte-Beuve, Eliot gave a speech to the Virgil Society concerning himself with the very same question of "What is a Classic?" In his opinion there was only one author who was 'classic'...Virgil
.
In this instance, though, Eliot said that the word had different meanings in different surroundings and that his concern was with "one meaning in one context". He states his focus is to define only "one kind of art" and that it does not have to be "better...than another kind". His opening paragraph makes a clear distinction between his particular meaning of classic having Virgil as the classic of all literature and the alternate meaning of classic as "a standard author".
Literary figures from different eras have also weighed in (sometimes humorously) on the matter. Alan Bennett
, the modern English playwright and author, said that “Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have read themselves.” Mark Van Doren
, the Columbia University
professor and poet, is quoted by Jim Trelease
(in his library-monograph "Classic Picture Books All Children Should Experience"), as saying that “A classic is any book that stays in print”. And in his “Disappearance of Literature” speech given over a century ago in 1900, Mark Twain
said, (referring to a learned academic’s lofty opinion of Milton’s “Paradise Lost”) that the work met the Professor’s definition of a classic as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. Clifton Fadiman
thought that the works that become classic books have their start in childhood, saying that "If you wish to live long in the memory of men, you should not write for them at all. You should write what their children will enjoy." In his view the works we now judge to be classics are "great starters". Fadiman unites classic books through the ages in a continuum (and concurs with Goethe's thoughts on the vigor and relevance of the ancient Classics
), when he states that classic books share a "quality of beginningness" with the legendary writer of the Iliad
and the Odyssey
– Homer
himself. Ezra Pound
in his own tome on reading, ABC of Reading
, gave his opinion as "A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rule, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness." Michael Dirda
, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize
winning critic, concurred with Pound's view regarding the vitality of a classic when he wrote that "...one of the true elements of a classic" was that "they can be read again and again with ever-deepening pleasure."
Penguin Books
, the parent company of Penguin Classics, had its inception during the 1930s when the founder, Alan Lane, was unable to find a book he actually wanted to read while at Exeter train station. As the company website tells it:
Sir Alan, in speaking of Penguin Books, is quoted on the company's website that “We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public and staked everything on it.” Within the first year, they had sold 3 million paperbacks of then-contemporary authors, such as Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie and Andre Maurois. Even so, the unarguable success of their Classics line was not a sure thing. Who could have known that E. V. Rieu
's translation of “The Odyssey
” (by Homer
), would become a best-seller in the millions?
As the official history is related from the Penguin.com(usa) group:
The point of relating this particular company’s early history is that even Penguin Classics started with a single choice. Sir Alan Lane himself chose the company's first classic as important, not so much considering others' opinions, but keeping in mind the primacy of his own.
The 'Classic Book' reading lists now in use at some universities have been in modern vogue since at least the early part of the 20th Century with the additional impetus in 1909 of the Harvard Classics
publishing imprimatur having individual works being chosen by outgoing Harvard University
president Charles W. Eliot. The vogue for these "Reading Lists" has continued onto the 21st Century, Jane Mallison’s “Book Smart: Your Essential Reading List for Becoming a Literary Genius in 365 Days” (from 2007) being one example of the longevity of the concept.
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy, either through an imprimatur such as being listed in any of the Western canon
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
s or through a reader's own personal opinion. The term itself is closely related to Western Canon
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
and to various college/university Senior Comprehensive Examination Reading Lists. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
to Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
and the related questions of "Why Read the Classics?" and "What Is a Classic?" have been essayed by authors from different genres and eras (Calvino, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...
). The ability of a classic book to be reinterpreted, to seemingly be renewed in the interests of generations of readers succeeding its creation, is a theme that is seen in the writings of literary critics including Michael Dirda
Michael Dirda
Michael Dirda , a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post.-Career:Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree, Dirda took a Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the...
, Saint-Beuve and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
.
Modern definitions
In the 1980s Italo CalvinoItalo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
said in his essay “Why Read the Classics?” that “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say” and comes to the crux of personal choice in this matter when he says (italics in the original translation): “Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.”The essay "Why Read the Classics?" is available in two different anthologies. It was first published in 1980/82 in the Italian as a chapter in "The Uses of Literature" (in 1986 in the English translation) and then re-published in the posthumous collection titled "Why Read the Classics?" Consideration of what makes a literary work a classic is for Calvino ultimately a personal choice, and, constructing a universal definition of what constitutes a Classic Book seems to him to be an impossibility, since, as Calvino says “There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics.”
What actually makes a work of literature a ‘classic book’ is not just a consideration of extensively published authors. In 1920, Fannie M. Clark, a teacher at the Rozelle School in East Cleveland, Ohio, predates Calvino’s similar conclusions by 60 years when she also essayed the question of what makes a book a ‘classic’ in her article “Teaching Children to Choose” in The English Journal
English Journal
English Journal is the official publication of the Secondary Education section of the American National Council of Teachers of English...
, Volume 9, No. 3, “The Official Organ of the National Council of Teachers of English”
Over the course of her essay Clark considers the question of what makes a piece of literature a classic and why the idea of “the classics” is important to society as a whole. Clark says that “teachers of English have been so long trained in the ‘classics’ that these ‘classics’ have become to them very much like the Bible, for the safety of which the rise of modern science causes such unnecessary fears.” She goes on to say that among the sources she consulted was a group of eighth-graders when she asked them the question: “What do you understand by the classics in literature?” Two of the answers Clark received were “Classics are books your fathers give you and you keep them to give to your children” and “Classics are those great pieces of literature considered worthy to be studied in English classes of high school or college”. Calvino agrees with the Ohio educator when he states “Schools and universities ought to help us understand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in question, but instead they do their level best to make us think the opposite.” Clark and Calvino come to a similar conclusion that when a literary work is analyzed for what makes it 'classic', that in just the act of analysis or as Clark says "the anatomical dissection", the reader can end up destroying the unique pleasure that mere enjoyment a work of literature can hold.
While blogging on the website guardian.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
in 2009, Chris Cox echoes Twain’s ‘classic’ sentiments of 1900 and Bennett’s witticism about classic books when he opined on the Guardian.Co “Books Blog” that there are actually two kinds of “classic novels”:
The first are those we know we should have read, but probably have not. These are generally the books that make us burn with shame when they come up in conversation…The second kind, meanwhile, are those books that we've read five times, can quote from on any occasion, and annoyingly push on to other people with the words: "You have to read this. It's a classic."
Literature
The terms “classic book” and “Western CanonWestern canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
” are closely related concepts that can confuse the student of literature but that are not necessarily each identical with the other. “Western canon” refers to a list of books considered to be “essential” and is presented in a variety of ways. It can be published as a collection (such as Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classics
Oxford World's Classics
Oxford World's Classics is an imprint of Oxford University Press. First established in 1901 by Grant Richards and purchased by the Oxford University Press in 1906, this imprint publishes primarily dramatic and classic literature for students and the general public...
, Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
, Everyman's Library
Everyman's Library
Everyman's Library is a series of reprinted classic literature currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent , who continue to publish Everyman Classics in paperback.J. M. Dent and Company began to publish the series in 1906...
, Great Books of the Western World
Great Books of the Western World
Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the western canon in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes.-History:The project got its start...
), presented as a list of books with an academic’s imprimatur (such as Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
's) or be the official reading list of an institution of higher learning(such as St. John’s College Academic Program “The Reading List” or Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
’s “Reading List: Senior Comprehensive Examination”).
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...
(1804–1869) stated his answer to the question “What is a Classic?” ("Qu'est-ce qu'un classique?") :
“The idea of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition, fashions and transmits itself, and endures…. A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.”
In this same essay Sainte-Beuve quoted Goethe (referring to the 'classics' concept)
- “Ancient works are classical not because they are old, but because they are powerful, fresh, and healthy.”Saint-Beuve's "What is a Classic" essay was originally published in Le ConstitutionnelLe ConstitutionnelLe Constitutionnel was a French political and literary newspaper, founded in Paris during the Hundred Days by Joseph Fouché. Originally established in October 1815 as The Independent, it took its current name during the Second Restoration. A voice for Liberals, Bonapartists, and critics of the...
on October 21, 1850 as Qu'est-ce qu'un classique?—Lundis("Monday"),Volume III, 40. (Moeller-Sally, Stephen. "Gogol's afterlife: the evolution of a classic in Imperial and Soviet Russia". Page 168, Evanston , Illinois. Northwestern University Press, 2002.) However it originated, an error regarding the date of Saint-Beauve's "What Is a Classic?" has crept into some sources. According to historical calendarsBiblioBazaarBiblioBazaar is, with Nabu Press, an imprint of the historical reprints publisher BiblioLife which is a based in Charleston, South Carolina and owned by BiblioLabs LLC....
).
The concept of 'the classic' was a theme of T.S. Eliot's literary criticism as well. In The Sacred Wood
The Sacred Wood (T.S. Eliot)
The Sacred Wood is a collection of 20 essays by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1920. Topics include Eliot's opinions of many literary works and authors, including Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and the poets Dante and Blake....
he thought that one of the reasons "Dante is a classic, and Blake only a poet of genius" because of "the concentration resulting from a framework of mythology and theology and philosophy". (In commenting about Eliot's influence, Professor Jan Gorak stated that "the idea of a canon has become intertwined with the idea of the classic, an idea that T.S. Eliot tried to revitalize for the 'modern experiment'".) In echoes of Sainte-Beuve, Eliot gave a speech to the Virgil Society concerning himself with the very same question of "What is a Classic?" In his opinion there was only one author who was 'classic'...Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
.
- "No modern language can hope to produce a classic, in the sense I have called Virgil a classic. Our classic, the classic of all Europe, is Virgil."
In this instance, though, Eliot said that the word had different meanings in different surroundings and that his concern was with "one meaning in one context". He states his focus is to define only "one kind of art" and that it does not have to be "better...than another kind". His opening paragraph makes a clear distinction between his particular meaning of classic having Virgil as the classic of all literature and the alternate meaning of classic as "a standard author".
Literary figures from different eras have also weighed in (sometimes humorously) on the matter. Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
, the modern English playwright and author, said that “Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have read themselves.” Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...
, the Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
professor and poet, is quoted by Jim Trelease
Jim Trelease
Jim Trelease , also known as James Joseph Trelease, is an educator and author who stresses reading aloud to children as a way to instill in them the love of literature.-Life:...
(in his library-monograph "Classic Picture Books All Children Should Experience"), as saying that “A classic is any book that stays in print”. And in his “Disappearance of Literature” speech given over a century ago in 1900, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
said, (referring to a learned academic’s lofty opinion of Milton’s “Paradise Lost”) that the work met the Professor’s definition of a classic as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. Clifton Fadiman
Clifton Fadiman
Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...
thought that the works that become classic books have their start in childhood, saying that "If you wish to live long in the memory of men, you should not write for them at all. You should write what their children will enjoy." In his view the works we now judge to be classics are "great starters". Fadiman unites classic books through the ages in a continuum (and concurs with Goethe's thoughts on the vigor and relevance of the ancient Classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
), when he states that classic books share a "quality of beginningness" with the legendary writer of the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
– Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
himself. Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
in his own tome on reading, ABC of Reading
ABC of Reading
ABC of Reading is a book by Ezra Pound published in 1934. In it, Pound sets out an approach to the appreciation and understanding of literature ....
, gave his opinion as "A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rule, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness." Michael Dirda
Michael Dirda
Michael Dirda , a Fulbright Fellowship recipient, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic for the Washington Post.-Career:Having studied at Oberlin College for his undergraduate degree, Dirda took a Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative literature. In 1978 Dirda started writing for the...
, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning critic, concurred with Pound's view regarding the vitality of a classic when he wrote that "...one of the true elements of a classic" was that "they can be read again and again with ever-deepening pleasure."
Imprimaturs
Publishing houses and colleges/universities are at times in the business of classic books. Publishers have their various types of ‘classic book’ lines, while universities and colleges have their ‘required reading lists’. If these books are the works of literature that well-read people are supposed to have read or at least be familiar with, then the genesis of the classic book genre and the processes through which texts are considered for selection (or not) is of interest. The development of the Penguin Classic line of books, among the most well-known of the classic imprints, can serve as an example.Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, the parent company of Penguin Classics, had its inception during the 1930s when the founder, Alan Lane, was unable to find a book he actually wanted to read while at Exeter train station. As the company website tells it:
- “Appalled by the selection on offer, Lane decided that good quality contemporary fiction should be made available at an attractive price and sold not just in traditional bookshops, but also in railway stations, tobacconists and chain stores.”
Sir Alan, in speaking of Penguin Books, is quoted on the company's website that “We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public and staked everything on it.” Within the first year, they had sold 3 million paperbacks of then-contemporary authors, such as Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie and Andre Maurois. Even so, the unarguable success of their Classics line was not a sure thing. Who could have known that E. V. Rieu
E. V. Rieu
Emile Victor Rieu CBE was a classicist, publisher and poet, best known for his lucid translations of Homer, as editor of Penguin Classics, and for a modern translation of the four Gospels which evolved from his role as editor of a projected Penguin translation of the Bible...
's translation of “The Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
” (by Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
), would become a best-seller in the millions?
As the official history is related from the Penguin.com(usa) group:
- “Ignoring the doubts of his colleagues, Allen Lane not only instantly agreed to publish the translation, but invited Rieu to edit a new series of Classics. It was a typical Lane decision, an instinctive leap, a certainty that an eager audience existed for new and accessible translations, one that Rieu's achievement had clearly created. It was not so much a gamble as an act of faith against all odds and a body of evidence that would have convinced any rational publisher guided solely by the balance sheet.”
The point of relating this particular company’s early history is that even Penguin Classics started with a single choice. Sir Alan Lane himself chose the company's first classic as important, not so much considering others' opinions, but keeping in mind the primacy of his own.
The 'Classic Book' reading lists now in use at some universities have been in modern vogue since at least the early part of the 20th Century with the additional impetus in 1909 of the Harvard Classics
Harvard Classics
The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W...
publishing imprimatur having individual works being chosen by outgoing Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
president Charles W. Eliot. The vogue for these "Reading Lists" has continued onto the 21st Century, Jane Mallison’s “Book Smart: Your Essential Reading List for Becoming a Literary Genius in 365 Days” (from 2007) being one example of the longevity of the concept.
External links
- National Council of Teachers of English
- Harold Bloom's Faculty Profile at Yale
- Harold Bloom Bio at the Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts website
- Ezra Pound Bio & Selected Bibliography at Poets.Org (Academy of American Poets)
- Links to Italo Calvino writings & Critical Essays about Calvino