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enlisted as a Dragoon under the name of / Trooper Comberback, but fell so constantly from his horse that it had / to be withdrawn from beneath him permanently; he was employed instead / upon matters relating to sanitation; he married Southey's sister, and / gave lectures; he became stout,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.