Anonymity by E.M. Forster — Read

DO you like to know who a book's by?

The question is more profound and even more literary than may appear. A poem for example: do we gain more or less pleasure from it when we know the name of the poet? The _Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens_, for example. No one knows who wrote _Sir Patrick Spens_. It comes to us out of the northern void like a breath of ice. Set beside it another ballad whose author is known -- _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_. That, too, contains a tragic voyage and the breath of ice, but it is signed Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and we know a certain amount about this Coleridge. Coleridge signed other poems and knew other poets; he ran away from Cambridge; he enlisted as a Dragoon under the name of Trooper Comberback, but fell so constantly from his horse that it had to be withdrawn from beneath him permanently; he was employed instead upon matters relating to sanitation; he married Southey's sister, and gave lectures; he became stout, pious and dishonest, took opium and died. With such information in our heads, we speak of the _Ancient Mariner_ as "a poem by Coleridge," but of _Sir Patrick Spens_ as "a poem. " What difference, if any, does this difference between them make upon our minds? And in the case of novels and plays -- does ignorance or knowledge of their authorship signify? And newspaper articles -- do they impress more when they are signed or unsigned? Thus -- rather vaguely -- let us begin our quest.