DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Literary Taste: How to Form It" (With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature) by Arnold Bennett. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Reproduction of the original: Literary Taste: How to Form It by Arnold Bennett

Including: A response to critics, and: Ten rules for "serious" writers, the author continues his fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and exposing the literary status quo.

Bring on the Books for Everybody is an engaging assessment of the robust popular literary culture that has developed in the United States during the past two decades. Jim Collins describes how a once solitary and print-based experience has become an exuberantly social activity, enjoyed as much on the screen as on the page. Fueled by Oprah’s Book Club, Miramax film adaptations, superstore bookshops, and new technologies such as the Kindle digital reader, literary fiction has been transformed into best-selling, high-concept entertainment. Collins highlights the infrastructural and cultural changes that have given rise to a flourishing reading public at a time when the future of the book has been called into question. Book reading, he claims, has not become obsolete; it has become integrated into popular visual media. Collins explores how digital technologies and the convergence of literary, visual, and consumer cultures have changed what counts as a “literary experience” in phenomena ranging from lush film adaptations such as The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love to the customer communities at Amazon. Central to Collins’s analysis and, he argues, to contemporary literary culture, is the notion that refined taste is now easily acquired; it is just a matter of knowing where to access it and whose advice to trust. Using recent novels, he shows that the redefined literary landscape has affected not just how books are being read, but also what sort of novels are being written for these passionate readers. Collins connects literary bestsellers from The Jane Austen Book Club and Literacy and Longing in L.A. to Saturday and The Line of Beauty, highlighting their depictions of fictional worlds filled with avid readers and their equations of reading with cultivated consumer taste.

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was a British writer. He went to work for his father but was unhappy working for his father and earning very little money. The theme of parental miserliness occurs in his works. At 21 he went to London to clerk for a solicitor. He then began working for a magazine called Women. When he noticed the poor material being submitted he began writing a serial for the periodical. He won a literary competition in Tit Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full time. Literary Taste: How to Form It With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature talks about what makes a true and how to read one. It discusses style and learning about the author. Bennett discusses a system for reading and the literary library. The final chapter is on taking mental stock.

“Literary Taste - How to Form It” is a 1909 essay by English writer Arnold Bennett. The essay discusses taste in relation to literature, and also includes an exhaustive list of books that Bennett believed constitute classics with every item individually costed. When originally published, the essay and list became very influential. Contents include: “The Aim”, “Your Particular Case”, “Why a Classic is a Classic”, “Where to Begin”, “How to Read a Classic”, “The Question of Style”, “Wrestling with an Author”, “System in Heading”, “Verse”, “Broad Counsels”, “An English Library: Period I”, “An English Library: Period II”, etc. Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English writer. Although he is perhaps best remembered for his popular novels, Bennett also produced work in other areas including the theatre, propaganda, journalism, and film. Other notable works by this author include: “Helen with a High Hand” (1910), “The Card” (1911), and “Hilda Lessways” (1911). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with an essay on Arnold Bennett by F. J. Harvey Darton.