Literature Network » Virginia Woolf

The classic way of sorting the sheep from the goats `No feeling reader likes all the canon. Me, I don't understand how Virginia Woolf became a classic'

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 20000204
Author:Philip Hensher

NO ONE really knows what qualities turn a book into a classic. Cynically, you could say that a classic is an old book that is still in print. The longer it is since the book was published, the more reliable the judgement that has given it classic status.

It is a process not very different from the ordinary processes of publishing: it is still a judgement made by the market. But as time goes on, the mistakes made by a book's first audience drop away, both the enthusiasm for something banal and the bafflement at something interesting and new.

What is left is what we have agreed is a classic; ...

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