Write

Description

Write

An inspirational greeting card with a quill in an inkwell and a quote about improvisation from Cyril Connolly: ‘Better to write for yourself and have no public that to write for the public and have no self.’

Cyril Vernon Connolly, who is quoted in this greeting card, was a British critic and writer. He edited Horizon, an influential literary magazine, for a decade after the Second World War. And he wrote for the Observer and he was joint chief book reviewer for the Sunday Times.

He knew everybody. The notable people who are mentioned on his page on Wikipedia read like a Who’s Who of the intellectuals and artists of his day.

Where was Cyril Connolly when he said “Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.”?

Was he at a party when he said this? Did the words escape his lips with a languid half-smile?

Was he at the lectern addressing young up-and-coming writers?

Was he warning them from his position as a successful writer or as a critic for the prestigious Sunday Times who had seen countless writers prostitute themselves for that filthy lucre?

Well, we know that The Rock Pool, a novel he wrote in 1936, didn’t do as well as he had hoped for.

And two years later he wrote Enemies of Promise, in which he talks about how he didn’t produce the literary masterpiece that people who knew him believed he was capable of writing.

So maybe he is telling his audience exactly what it says – that it is better to be true to yourself than to choose the easy option.

SKU: C0012