“There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.”

A sardonic comment on popular taste and the persistent market for undemanding literature · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Criticism
• Culture
• Literature

“Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.”

A characteristically sharp expression of Aldrich's distrust of fashionable dialect writing · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Criticism
• Language
• Wit

“One is here to commend all that one can commend and to leave the rest alone.”

A generous principle for approaching the work of fellow writers · The English Novel

• Criticism
• Kindness
• Literature

“God forbid that I should say anything really condemnatory of any book by any brother-novelist, alive or dead.”

A wry declaration of fellow feeling towards other writers before offering criticism · The English Novel

• Criticism
• Humour
• Literature

“The knowledge of the art of novel writing is open to every one who takes the trouble to like one book better than another and the literary tastes of men are fairly identical the world over and throughout time.”

Literary judgement begins with attentive reading rather than specialised authority · The English Novel

• Criticism
• Literature
• Reading

“For there is no other criterion of art but success, and the more lasting the success the better the art.”

Judging artistic achievement by its enduring power to reach an audience · The English Novel

• Art
• Criticism
• Time

“But, in the end, it is as useful to have something that will awaken you by its disagreements with yourself as to live for ever in concord with somnolent elders.”

Disagreement can stimulate thought more effectively than comfortable agreement · The English Novel

• Change
• Criticism
• Learning

“But the great use of technical discussion is that it arouses interest in the subject discussed.”

Defending argument about craft as a way of awakening curiosity · Author’s Apology, The English Novel

• Criticism
• Learning
• Writing

“I may be perfectly wrong in almost everything that I say. If I am, that is the end of me.”

A characteristically dry acknowledgement of the risks of literary judgement · Author’s Apology, The English Novel

• Criticism
• Humility
• Humour

“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”

Ford’s celebrated test for judging a book from a representative page · Critical maxim, commonly attributed

• Books
• Criticism
• Reading

“We have met young men who judge everything before learning to admire anything; who see the fault before the good, overanalyse, but never rejoice.”

Original: Yr ydym wedi cwrdd â rhai dynion ieuainc yn barnu popeth cyn dysgu edmygu dim; gweld y bai cyn gweld y da, yn gorfanylu, ond byth yn gorfoleddu. — Warning against learning to criticise before learning to admire · Sermon, Sul y Blodau, 31 March 1903 (Welsh)

• Criticism
• Joy
• Wisdom

“Linguistically, Naturalism achieved nothing beyond loosening the material and sweeping away rigid conventions.”

Original: Der Naturalismus hat sprachlich nichts bewirkt als eine Auflockerung des Materials und eine Beseitigung erstarrter Conventionen. — A characteristically forceful judgement on Naturalism's contribution to literary language · University lecture, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik der neuesten Zeit, 1914 (German)

• Criticism
• Language
• Literature

“To keep fixing the French spirit to a few catchwords such as rationalism, clarity, logic and measure is to hound a principle to death through lazy generalisation merely because it suited certain periods and individuals.”

Original: Den französischen Geist immer wieder auf ein paar Schlagworte wie Rationalismus, Klarheit, Logik, Maass festlegen wollen, heisst ein Prinzip, weil es auf gewisse Epochen und Individualitäten passte, durch träge Verallgemeinerung zu Tode hetzen. — Warns against reducing a culture to convenient stereotypes · Essay, Die neue französische Lyrik, 1912 (German)

• Criticism
• Culture
• Identity

“Our age, which has driven artistic craftsmanship further than almost any before it, has shuddered at the profound ambiguity of perfection.”

Original: Unsere Zeit, die das Handwerksmässige der Kunst so hochgetrieben hat wie kaum eine zuvor, hat mit Schaudern die tiefe Zweideutigkeit der Vollendung erkannt. — Questions whether technical perfection alone can make great art · Essay, Die neue französische Lyrik, 1912 (German)

• Art
• Criticism
• Skill

“They represent my own particular attempt to urge the poetic currents of the day in a direction that might be favourable to me.”

Frankly acknowledging the personal interests that can shape literary criticism · Essay, Apologia Pro Specie Sua, Scepticisms (1919)

• Art
• Criticism
• Poetry

“I argued that each of us was trying to urge poetry in a direction favorable to himself, and that dispassionate judgment was a chimera.”

Acknowledging that literary criticism is inevitably shaped by personal artistic interests · Essay in The Atlantic (1964), recalling an earlier critical preface

• Art
• Criticism
• Poetry