Anecdotal Evidence

I defy you to identify the writer being described:   “[A]ll he really wanted to do in company was to make jokes, to turn the world upside ...

Prophecy is best left to the prophets. Writers are not a notably prescient bunch. Too often, like the rest of us, they see only what they ho...

Austin Dobson in A Bookman’s Budget (1917) claims the longest sentence ever written in English can be found in William Hazlitt’s Spirit of ...

Pessimism has its charms, chief among them being the reduced likelihood of disappointment. Even on the diminished scale of an individual lif...

In 1995, R.L. Barth published a slender chapbook titled Samuel Johnson: Selected Latin Poems Translated by Various Hands . Included are twen...

A longtime reader, a retired attorney in Philadelphia, writes:   “[A]n intrusive suggestion for a blog post: what books MUST your readers ...

  My ignorance often burns holes in my pride, turning self-congratulation into embarrassment. A reader asks for my opinion of the English po...