Adventures in Criticism

Arthur Quiller-Couch turns weekly book reviewing into a discussion of how literature should be read and judged. Collected from The Speaker, these short essays range across Chaucer, Defoe, Stevenson and other writers. Adventures in Criticism begins with Professor Skeat's edition of Chaucer, weighing the value of painstaking scholarship alongside the pleasure that poetry gives an ordinary reader. The author's dedication also offers a candid account of choosing pieces from his earlier newspaper work.

In a discussion of storytelling, he asks what separates a story from an anecdote, using two of Kipling's tales as examples. Quiller-Couch argues that fiction depends on insight into private hopes and feelings, beyond the collection of observable details. His conversational arguments make the volume useful for readers interested in literary criticism, as well as writers thinking about character, selection and the relationship between a plot and human experience.