AUTHORS ON AUTHORS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 20

AUTHORS ON AUTHORS

A questionnaire recently sent out by the "News Chronicle" in London to several contemporary writers showed' interesting if surprising results. The newspaper compiled a list of 70 writers ,of acknowledged eminence, and asked: "Have you read these authors? And do you still read , them?" Not only gaps, but prejudices were exposed in the answers. W. H. Auden, for instance, declares that Steele and Addison are his abominations, and that he hates all essayists, even Charles Lamb. Mary Borden is not in the habit of reading poetry. Evelyn Waugh confesses that his principal use for Shakespeare is in solving crossword puzzles. Philip Guedalla is content to leave Jane Austen to be the Bible of lady: novelists. Lady Eleanor Smith had never heard of Chatterton until she found Ms name in the list; and she has never been able to finish a book of Conrad's.

All of these authors have definite views on Dickens. Mary Borden describes herself as a Dickens fan; and Philip Guedalla is in much the same category, for he feels that who belittles Dickens condemns himself. Evelyn Waugh, on the other hand, though he reads Dickens, cannot bear his jokes, and for that reason cafanot stand "The Pickwick Papers." A. G. Macdonell considers him a supreme creator of character, but would not go to him to learn to write English. And Rafael Sabatini says of him, "I certainly don't believe in him," and adds that if you have not read him before you are twenty you are never likely to take to him.