Please recommend writers or books
Yilaner
English essays or short articles. Please recommend to
me some authors or books which show mastery in English
command. I prefer short articles or essays which exhibit
beautiful but not abstruse language. Thanks!
Peter Groves
news:72144e6e-80c4-4603...@t11g2000vbc.googlegroups.com...
Try the Collected Essays of George Orwell, a great master of lucid, stylish
but still colloquial prose. Dr Johnson recommended the aspiring essayist to
give his days and nights to Addison; Orwell would be the modern equivalent.
Peter Groves
bert
"On Growth and Form", the 1917 work by D'Arcy Wentworth
Thompson, is highly regarded for the clarity and elegance
of its English expression, as well as for the novelty of
its subject material. Most of its chapters can be read
as essays on a particular topic. An abridged paperback
edition, edited by John Tyler Bonner, is available in
the Cambridge University Press "Canto" series.
--
Richard Chambers
Peter Groves wrote
It depends upon the level of English you have already achieved. At a more
basic level of English than George Orwell's essays, I would recommend A A
Milne's "House at Pooh Corner" or "Winnie the Pooh", in the original English
version. i.e. the British version, not in the altered version published by
Walt Disney Inc. These two books are of such universal appeal that they have
been translated into almost every major language of the world. It is quite
possible that your own parents read these stories to you in your own
language when you were a child.
The genius of A A Milne's writing is that he produced well-written stories
that had an appeal both to the child and to the parent. From the adult's
point of view, the stories are totally escapist, into a world where the only
thing that matters is an ill-organised hunt for a Woozle [1]. The stories
are also very funny, and make you laugh out loud. Young children, on the
other hand, take the stories very seriously. Brilliant yet simple writing,
and universally recognised as a World Classic. Ideal as a precursor to
George Orwell's essays, which are the next level up in difficulty.
[1] an unspecified type of animal that leaves tracks in the snow.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Peter Groves
news:KN2dne4lpo1ApbPX...@brightview.co.uk...
Agreed absolutely. One measure of a writer is the number of his or her
phrases that stay in your head, and with Milne the number is (for me)
legion. I use his poem 'Disobedience' as a way of teaching metre.
Peter Groves
Athel Cornish-Bowden
All that is true, but D'Arcy Thompson is not a writer I'd recommend to
learners all the same. His writing assumed a high degree of English
competence on the part of his readers, not to mention a very high
cultural level: he assumed that his readers could cope with longish
quotations from French and Latin, shorter ones from Greek and German,
most of them left untranslated; one of the French passages goes on for
a page and is quite important for the argument he was developing. In
addition, his style was probably already consciously old-fashioned at
the time he was writing.
Nonetheless I can thoroughly recommend the Bonner edition to anyone who
can cope with a more demanding style than George Orwell's. You can pick
it up at Amazon
(http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Form-DArcy-Wentworth-Thompson/dp/0521437768/ref=cm_cr-mr-title)
for $18.47.
--
athel
Eric Walker
Any or all of the numerous essays by Herbert Read are worth
consideration, as is his book "English Prose Style".
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Glenn Knickerbocker
> I prefer short articles or essays which exhibit beautiful but not
> abstruse language.
Two writers I love for the way they cast big ideas in simple language
are John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
�R