Among the greatest of living novelists our readers will certainly
place Mr. Arnold Bennett, and his selection is very interesting. It is Herbert Spencer's Introduction to the Study of Sociology, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karairuzzov, Matthew Arnold's earlier poems. Mr. E. F. Benson adds a philosophical aside to his selection : "No book that is worth reading ever had anything but a bad influence on any author. What he invariably picks up (if he picks up anything) is its defects. Its merits are always the incommunicable secret of the individual writer. But usually he picks up nothing. The three books that have thus most influenced me are : (1) Le Livre de la pith e et de la mort, by Pierre Loti. I derived from it a poisonous streak of sentimentality. (2) Othmai, by Ouida, from which I caught an adolescent habit of 'rich' description. (3) Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, from which I learned clumsy mechanism." Mr. Hugh Walpole agrees in part with Mr. Bennett, for his selection is, The Brothers Kararnawv, The Collected Poems of Wordsworth The Collected Poems of Browning. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's choice is : Froissart, Edgar Allan Poe, Myers's Human Personality. Mr. George Moore writes to siiy he has considered "the difficult question you put to me. I cannot tell what books have influenced me, but I can say that the authors that have influenced me are, Shelley, Gautier, and Turgenev. Shelley in my youth, Gautier in early manhood, Turgenev in middle age, and my admiration of these writers continues unchanged." Mr. Maurice Baring says : "I do not believe anyone can tell what particular book has influenced him most. A man is part of everything he has read as well as of everyone he has met, but if you ask me what I think the best story in the world, I would reply without hesitation the Odyssey, the second best Don Quixote."
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