Authors as critics

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), (author of "A room of one's own") at the beginning of her career wrote some (anonymous) reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. They are published in book form as "Genius & Ink." Though not easy to read & demanding the reader's prior knowledge of the authors discussed, it provides unusual insights into their work. Though enthusiastic about Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Montaigne, Joseph Conrad & Thomas Hardy, she is less so about the diary of John Evelyn, a contemporary of the immortal Samuel Pepys. Like Hans Christian Andersen's child in the story "Emperor's New Clothes", she writes (James Joyce's) " Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe - immense in daring,
terrific in disaster."

C. S .Lewis (1898-1963), author of the popular "Narnia Chronicles" discusses "The Reading Life." First he confesses regarding (the now not so famous) George MacDonald as his master. He writes aphoristically "You couldn't make me like Henry James or dislike Jane Austen whatever you did." He found Dante's "The Divine Comedy", the greatest poetry & Alexander Dumas' "The Three Musketeers" disgusting with no connection to human nature or mother Earth. About children's literature, he says "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten, which is not equally (& often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty."