Style the Art of Writing Well Fl Lucas Pdf

Style

Cover of first United kingdom and US edition
Author	F. L. Lucas
Genre	Style guide, literary criticism
Published	September 1955
Publisher	Cassell & Company, London Macmillan Visitor, New York
ISBN	978-0-85719-187-8

F. 50. Lucas'due south Fashion (1955) is a book about the writing and appreciation of "expert prose", expanded for the full general reader from lectures originally given to English language Literature students at Cambridge University. It sets out to answer the questions, "Why is so much writing wordy, confused, graceless, ho-hum?" and "What are the qualities that endow language, spoken or written, with persuasiveness or ability?" ^[1] It offers "a few principles" and "a number of examples of the effective apply of language, peculiarly in prose", and adds "a few warnings".^[two] The book is written as a series of eleven essays (with much quotation and anecdote, and without bullet-points or note-form), which themselves illustrate the virtues commended.^{[3] [4]} The work is unified past what Lucas calls "one vital thread, on which the random principles of good writing may exist strung, and grasped as a whole".^[5] That "vital thread" is "courtesy to readers". It is upon this emphasis on good manners, urbanity, practiced sense of humor, grace, control, that the book'southward aspiration to usefulness rests. Discussion tends to circle back to 18th-century masters like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Gibbon, the later Johnson, or their successors like Sainte-Beuve, Anatole France, Lytton Strachey and Desmond MacCarthy.

Contents [edit]

Lucas begins with a definition of style in prose, and a discussion of its importance. He questions the extent to which style can be taught, given that it is a reflection of personality ("The issues of way are actually bug of personality" ^[six]), but concludes that "Writers should write from the best side of their characters, and at their all-time moments."^[seven] He goes on to outline the elements of a lucid, varied, pointed prose style; to warn of perils (the book is an anthology of weeds as well as flowers); and to explore different methods of planning, composition and revision. Passages quoted for assay are in a range of styles, taken from messages, essays, criticism, biography, history, novels and plays. In that location is a affiliate on the rhythms of prose and on aural furnishings. Of figures of oral communication, Lucas deals with simile and metaphor; of rhetorical tropes, he discusses irony, and syntactical devices such as inversion and antithesis. For points of correct English usage he refers readers to Fowler's Mod English Usage.^[8] Giving, however, a few examples of regrettable change and ignorance, he stresses the importance of "preserving the purity of the English language tongue".^[9] Languages evolve, but can likewise degenerate.^[ten]

"I can recollect of no constantly perfect stylist who has non laboured like an emmet." [eleven] "Ane cannot enquire oneself also ofttimes, both in writing and in re-reading what 1 has written, 'Do I actually hateful that? Accept I said it for outcome, though I know it is exaggerated? Or from cowardice, because otherwise I should be ill thought of?' " [12] "A writer should view his mental offspring as relentlessly as a Spartan father. If he does not 'expose' his unsound offspring himself, others will, in a different sense." [thirteen]

― F. L. Lucas, Style (1955)

Preface

Affiliate 1: The Value of Style

Chapter 2: The foundation of Style - Character

Chapter 3: Courtesy to Readers - (1) Clarity

Affiliate 4: Courtesy to Readers - (ii) Brevity and Variety

Affiliate 5: Courtesy to Readers - (3) Urbanity and Simplicity

Affiliate 6: Good Sense of humour and Gaiety

Chapter 7: Good Sense and Sincerity

Chapter 8: Expert Health and Vitality

Chapter 9: Simile and Metaphor

Chapter 10: The Harmony of Prose

Affiliate 11: Methods of writing

Background and publishing history [edit]

Fashion was based on one of Lucas's first courses of lectures at Cambridge (1946 to 1953) after his render from Bletchley Park.^[xiv] The determination to lecture on 'Good prose, and the writing of it' (the grade was later renamed 'Style') reflected a wish to improve the quality of student essays, adversely affected, Lucas felt, by the New Criticism.^[fifteen] The decision to expand the lectures into volume class for the general reader was prompted partly by his recent experience as an Intelligence report-writer in Hut 3,^{[xvi] [17]} and partly by his belief that "on the quality of a nation'south language depends to some extent the quality of its life and thought; and on the quality of its life and thought the quality of its linguistic communication".^[18] Starting time published in 1955 by Cassell & Company of London and by the Macmillan Visitor, New York, Style went through seven impressions in the U.k. between 1955 and 1964. In the second edition, published by Collier Books of New York in 1962 and by Pan Books of London in 1964, Lucas fabricated pocket-sized changes and added – in response to some readers' protests^[19] – footnote translations (his ain) of the book's foreign-language quotations. Cassell reprinted the first edition in 1974, adding a Foreword by Sir Bruce Fraser; this reissue Cassell mistakenly chosen the "2nd edition". Afterwards existence out-of-print for iv decades, the existent 2nd edition, with Lucas'southward translations, checked confronting the first edition, was reprinted in 2012 by Harriman House Publishing, of Petersfield, who added their own sub-title, 'The Art of Writing Well'.^[20] "Though one cannot teach people to write well," Lucas had observed, "one can sometimes teach them to write rather ameliorate."^[21] Harriman House brought out a quaternary edition in 2020, correcting minor errors in the third and adding a Foreword past Joseph Epstein.

Reception [edit]

Style was generally well received.^{[22] [23]} "A delightful book," wrote Time and Tide, "exemplifying brilliantly all that information technology seeks to instill – enjoyment of reading and mastery of writing."^[24] It was Lucas's most successful book.^[25] He had long had a reputation equally a stylist,^{[26] [notation 1]} "i whose pen possesses the sparkle and fascination which made the essay, in the hands of writers such every bit Salary and Montaigne, a matter of dazzler and interest".^[27] Some reviewers expressed the view that "The book's almost obvious merit lies in its quotations" (Rayner Heppenstall in the New Statesman). "In that location are almost as many in French as in English language, and their range and aptness are remarkable."^[28] Others, however, felt that at that place should have been fewer examples from poetry and more than from contemporary prose.^{[28] [29]} The Listener approved "the entertaining relevance of anecdote".^[30] Sir Bruce Fraser praised Lucas's close analysis of faulty manner: "The passage in which he dissects a groovy hunk of Swinburne'southward prose, reduces information technology by more than half, recognizes that information technology could be fabricated shorter still, and ends by suggesting that it need non have been written at all, is in itself worth the whole toll of the volume".^[31] Raymond Mortimer in The Sunday Times, however, found the author "sometimes laboured in his feet to be debonair".^[4] Philip Toynbee of The Observer disliked the piece of work and dismissed its writer as "middlebrow": "There accept been wonderful styles which illustrate the virtues of clarity, brevity, simplicity and vitality. Other styles, no less wonderful, accept exhibited obscurity, amplitude, complexity and decadence. Good writers take been urbane, gay and good for you: other good writers have been boorish, melancholic and diseased... Mr Lucas pays lip-service to the recalcitrant disorder of the scene" just "writes far too briefly of variety".^[32] More recently, Joseph Epstein in The New Criterion (2011) considered the book "filled with fine things ... F. 50. Lucas wrote the all-time book on prose composition, for the not-so-simple reason that, in the modern era, he was the smartest, most cultivated man to turn his energies to the task".^[33] The 2011 article "brought attention to this neglected classic and helped gear up in train its reissue".^{[34] [35]}

'On the Fascination of Manner' (1960) [edit]

Lucas returned to the subject in a 4000-word essay, 'On the Fascination of Manner', published in the March 1960 number of Vacation magazine.^[36] The essay reworks the core points of Style more succinctly, in a different order and with some changes in accent, and adds new examples and a few autobiographical anecdotes. It was reprinted in Birk & Birk, The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Style (New York, 1968)^[17] and in McCuen & Winkler, Readings for Writers (New York, 2009).^[37] The essay was reissued in 2012 as 'How to Write Powerful Prose', by Harriman House Publishing, Petersfield.^[38]

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Lucas's own manner had been analysed in A. J. J. Ratcliff's Prose of Our Time (London 1931)

References [edit]

1. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style (London 1955), p.10
2. ^ Lucas, F. L., Fashion (London 1955), p.16, p.45
3. ^ John Rosselli, review of Style in the Manchester Guardian, September 1955
4. ^ ^{a b} Raymond Mortimer, review of Way in The Sunday Times, 11 September 1955
5. ^ Lucas, F. 50., Style (London 1955), author's paragraph on dust-jacket
6. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style (London 1955), p.48
7. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style (London 1955), p.61
8. ^ Lucas, F. L., Manner (London 1955), Preface
9. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style (London 1955), pp.41–45
10. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style (London 1955), pp.35–37
11. ^ Lucas, F. Fifty., Mode (London 1955), p.269
12. ^ Lucas, F. 50., Manner (London 1955), p.151
13. ^ Lucas, F. 50., Style (London 1955), p.166
14. ^ Cambridge University Reporter, 1946–1953
15. ^ Lucas, F. Fifty., Way (London 1955), p.24–25
16. ^ Lucas, F. L., Way (London 1955), p.22, p.143
17. ^ ^{a b} Lucas, F. 50., 'On the Fascination of Style', in Birk, N. P., & Birk, G. B., eds., The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Fashion (New York 1968), pp.486–494
18. ^ Lucas, F. Fifty., Mode (London 1955), p.36
19. ^ Lucas, F. L., Style, second edition (New York 1962, London 1964), Preface
20. ^ F. L. Lucas Way: The Fine art of Writing Well, Harriman House Publishing 2012
21. ^ Lucas, F. Fifty., 'On the Fascination of Style', in Birk, Due north. P., & Birk, G. B., The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Way (New York 1968), p.490
22. ^ F. L. Lucas, Style: The Art of Writing Well, Harriman House Publishing 2012, pp.i–iii (printing quotations)
23. ^ Nowell-Smith, Simon, The House of Cassell, 1848-1958 (London 1958)
24. ^ Hugh Gordon Porteus, review of Style in the Time and Tide, September 1955
25. ^ Wilkinson, 50. P., Kingsmen of a Century, 1873–1972 (Cambridge 1980)
26. ^ Sir Richard Livingstone, Foreword to Lucas's Euripides and his Influence (Boston 1923)
27. ^ Cassell'south advertisement for Lucas's Studies French and English language (London 1934), dust-jacket
28. ^ ^{a b} Rayner Heppenstall, 'Prose for Full general Purposes', review of Style in The New Statesman and Nation, 24 September 1955, p.371-372
29. ^ J. M. Cohen, review of Manner in The Spectator, eighteen November 1955
30. ^ Review of Style in The Listener, September 1955
31. ^ Foreword by Sir Bruce Fraser to 1974 Cassell reprint of Style
32. ^ Philip Toynbee, review of Mode in The Observer, xi September 1955
33. ^ Epstein, Joseph, 'Heavy Sentences', The New Criterion June 2011 [1]
34. ^ F. L. Lucas, Fashion: The Fine art of Writing Well (Harriman House Publishing 2012), Publisher's Acknowledgements, p.257
35. ^ Walther, Matthew, 'The Art of Writing Well', review of Way in New English Review, July 2012
36. ^ Holiday mag, Curtis Publishing Visitor, Pennsylvania, March 1960
37. ^ McCuen, Jo Ray, & Winkler, Anthony C., eds., Readings for Writers (New York 2009) ISBN 1-4282-3128-v
38. ^ 'How to Write Powerful Prose', Harriman House Publishing, Petersfield

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_%28book%29

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