Anonymity

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About this book

The enquiry asks whether readers gain more or less pleasure from a poem when they know the poet’s name, and whether newspaper articles impress more when signed or unsigned. The comparison sets Sir Patrick Spens, whose writer is unknown, beside The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is signed Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The account of words distinguishes giving information from creating an atmosphere, while allowing that words often perform both functions because the two functions are not incompatible.

The enquiry says that information ought to be signed, while describing creation as a more difficult matter and proposing that literature does not want to be signed. The discussion treats the signature as belonging to the surface personality and to the world of information, calling the name a ticket rather than the spirit of life.

About the author

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as biographies and pageant plays.