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 , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. 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 Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer CBE (25 April 1895 – 9 January 1980), who wrote under the name Raymond Mortimer, was a British writer on art and literature, known mostly as a critic and literary editor, who also wrote a classic history of th ...

, review of ''Style'' in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British 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 News UK, whi ...

'', 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 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (; 23 December 1804 – 13 October 1869) was a French literary critic. Early life He was born in Boulogne, educated there, and studied medicine at the Collège Charlemagne in Paris (1824–27). In 1828, he se ...

Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie França ...

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 psychological insight ...

and

Desmond MacCarthy Sir Charles Otto Desmond MacCarthy FRSL (20 May 1877 – 7 June 1952) was a British writer and the foremost literary critic, literary and dramatic critic of his day. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, fro ...

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 ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words ...

''. 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 Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

. 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 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 literature functioned as ...

. 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 Hut 3 was a section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park during World War II. It retained the name for its functions when it moved into Block D. It produced military intelligence codenamed ULTRA from the decrypts ...

, 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 Cassell & Co is a British book publishing house, founded in 1848 by John Cassell (1817–1865), which became in the 1890s an international publishing group company. In 1995, Cassell & Co acquired Pinter Publishers. In December 1998, Cassell & ...

of London and by the

Macmillan Company Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

, New York, ''Style'' went through seven impressions in the UK between 1955 and 1964. In the second edition, published by

Collier Books Crowell-Collier Publishing Company was an American publisher that owned the popular magazines '' Collier's'', ''Woman's Home Companion'' and ''The American Magazine''. Crowell's subsidiary, P.F. Collier and Son, published ''Collier's Encyclopedia, ...

of New York in 1962 and by

Pan Books Pan Books is a 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. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, est ...

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 Petersfield is a market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is north of Portsmouth. The town has its own railway station on the Portsmouth Direct line, the mainline rail link connecting Portsmouth a ...

, 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 Joseph Epstein (October 16, 1911 – April 11, 1944), also known as Colonel Gilles and as Joseph Andrej, was a Polish-born Jewish communist activist and a French Resistance leader during World War II. He was executed by the Germans. Communi ...

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 style had been analysed in A. J. J. Ratcliff's ''Prose of Our Time'' (London 1931) "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 John Rayner Heppenstall (27 July 1911 in Lockwood, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England – 23 May 1981 in Deal, Kent, England) was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.John Wakeman, ''World Authors 1950-1970 : a companion volu ...

in the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...

''). "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. ''The Listener'' 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".

in ''The Sunday Times'', however, found the author "sometimes laboured in his anxiety to be debonair".

Philip Toynbee Theodore Philip Toynbee (25 June 1916 – 15 June 1981) was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called ''Pantaloon'', a work in several volumes, only some of whi ...

of ''

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'' 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,

in ''

The New Criterion ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' (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)

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 & 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.'How to Write Powerful Prose', Harriman House Publishing, Petersfield
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Notes

References

{{F. L. Lucas Style guides Books of literary criticism 1955 non-fiction books Cassell (publisher) books

Contents

Background and publishing history

Reception

'On the Fascination of Style' (1960)

Notes

References