F. L. Lucas's ''Style'' (1955) is a book about the writing and appreciation of "good prose", expanded for the general reader from lectures originally given to English literature students at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
. It sets out to answer the questions, "Why is so much writing wordy, confused, graceless, dull?" and "What are the qualities that endow language, spoken or written, with persuasiveness or power?" It offers "a few principles" and "a number of examples of the effective use of language, especially in prose", and adds "a few warnings". The book is written as a series of eleven essays (with much quotation and anecdote, and without bullet-points or note-form), which themselves illustrate the virtues commended.
[ Raymond Mortimer, review of ''Style'' in '']The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...
'', 11 September 1955 The work is unified by what Lucas calls "one vital thread, on which the random principles of good writing may be strung, and grasped as a whole". That "vital thread" is "courtesy to readers". It is upon this emphasis on good manners, urbanity, good humour, grace, control, that the book's aspiration to usefulness rests. Discussion tends to circle back to 18th-century masters like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Gibbon, the later Johnson, or their successors like
Sainte-Beuve,
Anatole France,
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...
and
Desmond MacCarthy.
Contents
Lucas begins with a definition of style in prose, and a discussion of its importance. He questions the extent to which style can be taught, given that it is a reflection of personality ("The problems of style are really problems of personality" ), but concludes that "Writers should write from the best side of their characters, and at their best moments." He goes on to outline the elements of a lucid, varied, pointed prose style; to warn of perils (the book is an anthology of weeds as well as flowers); and to explore different methods of planning, composition and revision. Passages quoted for analysis are in a range of styles, taken from letters, essays, criticism, biography, history, novels and plays. There is a chapter on the rhythms of prose and on aural effects. Of figures of speech, Lucas deals with simile and metaphor; of rhetorical tropes, he discusses irony, and syntactical devices such as inversion and antithesis. For points of correct English usage he refers readers to Fowler's ''
Modern English Usage''. Giving, however, a few examples of regrettable change and ignorance, he stresses the importance of "preserving the purity of the English tongue". Languages evolve, but can also degenerate.
:Preface
:Chapter 1: The Value of Style
:Chapter 2: The foundation of Style - Character
:Chapter 3: Courtesy to Readers - (1) Clarity
:Chapter 4: Courtesy to Readers - (2) Brevity and Variety
:Chapter 5: Courtesy to Readers - (3) Urbanity and Simplicity
:Chapter 6: Good Humour and Gaiety
:Chapter 7: Good Sense and Sincerity
:Chapter 8: Good Health and Vitality
:Chapter 9: Simile and Metaphor
:Chapter 10: The Harmony of Prose
:Chapter 11: Methods of writing
Background and publishing history
''Style'' was based on one of Lucas's first courses of lectures at Cambridge (1946 to 1953) after his return from
Bletchley Park. The decision to lecture on 'Good prose, and the writing of it' (the course was later renamed 'Style') reflected a wish to improve the quality of student essays, adversely affected, Lucas felt, by the
New Criticism
New Criticism was a Formalism (literature), formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of l ...
. The decision to expand the lectures into book form for the general reader was prompted partly by his recent experience as an Intelligence report-writer in
Hut 3,
and partly by his belief that "on the quality of a nation's language depends to some extent the quality of its life and thought; and on the quality of its life and thought the quality of its language". First published in 1955 by
Cassell & Company of London and by the
Macmillan Company, New York, ''Style'' went through seven impressions in the UK between 1955 and 1964. In the second edition, published by
Collier Books of New York in 1962 and by
Pan Books
Pan Books is a British publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany.
History
Pan Books began as an indepe ...
of London in 1964, Lucas made minor changes and added – in response to some readers' protests – footnote translations (his own) of the book's foreign-language quotations. Cassell reprinted the first edition in 1974, adding a Foreword by
Sir Bruce Fraser; this reissue Cassell mistakenly called the "second edition". After being out-of-print for four decades, the real second edition, with Lucas's translations, checked against the first edition, was reprinted in 2012 by Harriman House Publishing, of
Petersfield, who added their own sub-title, 'The Art of Writing Well'. "Though one cannot teach people to write well," Lucas had observed, "one can sometimes teach them to write rather better." Harriman House brought out a fourth edition in 2020, correcting minor errors in the third and adding a Foreword by
Joseph Epstein.
Reception
''Style'' was generally well received. "A delightful book," wrote
''Time and Tide'', "exemplifying brilliantly all that it seeks to instill – enjoyment of reading and mastery of writing." It was Lucas's most successful book. He had long had a reputation as a stylist,
[Lucas's own early style had been analysed in A. J. J. Ratcliff's ''Prose of Our Time'' (London 1931). His mature style can be seen in his review-cum-essay]
'Long Lives the Emperor'
in '' The Historical Journal'', Vol.8, No.1, Cambridge, 1965. "one whose pen possesses the sparkle and fascination which made the essay, in the hands of writers such as Bacon and Montaigne, a thing of beauty and interest". Some reviewers expressed the view that "The book's most obvious merit lies in its quotations" (
Rayner Heppenstall in the ''
New Statesman''). "There are almost as many in French as in English, and their range and aptness are remarkable."
[Rayner Heppenstall, 'Prose for General Purposes', review of ''Style'' in ''The New Statesman and Nation'', 24 September 1955, p.371-372] Others, however, felt that there should have been fewer examples from poetry and more from contemporary prose.
approved "the entertaining relevance of anecdote".
Sir Bruce Fraser praised Lucas's close analysis of faulty style: "The passage in which he dissects a great hunk of Swinburne's prose, reduces it by more than half, recognizes that it could be made shorter still, and ends by suggesting that it need not have been written at all, is in itself worth the whole price of the book".
Raymond Mortimer in ''The Sunday Times'', however, found the author "sometimes laboured in his anxiety to be debonair".
of ''
The Observer'' disliked the work and dismissed its author as "middlebrow": "There have been wonderful styles which illustrate the virtues of clarity, brevity, simplicity and vitality. Other styles, no less wonderful, have exhibited obscurity, amplitude, complexity and decadence. Good writers have been urbane, gay and healthy: other good writers have been boorish, melancholic and diseased... Mr Lucas pays lip-service to the recalcitrant disorder of the scene" but "writes far too briefly of variety". More recently,
Joseph Epstein in ''
The New Criterion'' (2011) considered the book "filled with fine things ... F. L. Lucas wrote the best book on prose composition, for the not-so-simple reason that, in the modern era, he was the smartest, most cultivated man to turn his energies to the task". The 2011 article "brought attention to this neglected classic and helped set in train its reissue".
'On the Fascination of Style' (1960) and 'The Art of Proverbs' (1965)
Lucas returned to the subject in a 4000-word essay, 'On the Fascination of Style', published in the March 1960 number of
''Holiday'' magazine. The essay reworks the core points of ''Style'' more succinctly, in a different order and with some changes in emphasis, and adds new examples and a few autobiographical anecdotes. It was reprinted in Birk and Birk, ''The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Style'' (New York, 1968)
[Lucas, F. L., 'On the Fascination of Style', in Birk, N. P., & Birk, G. B., eds., ''The Odyssey Reader: Ideas and Style'' (New York 1968), pp.486–494] and in McCuen & Winkler, ''Readings for Writers'' (New York, 2009). The essay was reissued in 2012 as 'How to Write Powerful Prose', by Harriman House Publishing, Petersfield.
His companion essay, 'The Art of Proverbs', published in the September 1965 number of
''Holiday'' magazine, explored two aspects of style – brevity and metaphor – in a celebration of world proverbs as a source of wit, wisdom, and insight into human nature and national character. The piece was reprinted in Mieder and Sobieski, ''Gold Nuggets or Fool's Gold? Magazine and Newspaper Articles on the (Ir)relevance of Proverbial Phrases'' (Burlington, 2006).
Mieder, Wolfgang & Sobieski, Janet (eds.), ''Gold Nuggets or Fool’s Gold? Magazine and Newspaper Articles on the (Ir)relevance of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases''; The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont (2006), pp.41–49
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Notes
References
{{F. L. Lucas
Style guides
Books of literary criticism
1955 non-fiction books
Cassell (publisher) books