““We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author.””
![“---In his major phase, he[Conrad] was "ahead of his times" in ideas and techniques;and this was because he was more intelligently and perceptively of his times than most writers then were. In his vigilant response to 19th century preoccupations, he anticipated--often critically--many 20th century…” quote by Cedric Watts A Preface to Conrad p184](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/00b/cedric-watts-a-preface-to-conr_conrad_in-his-major-phase-he-conrad-was-ahead-o_3044204.jpg)
![“[Henry James'] essay's closing lines can either be read neutrally or as a more purposeful wish that this mystery [of Shakespeare's authorship] will one day be resolved by the 'criticism of the future': 'The figured tapestry, the long arras that hides him, is always there ... May it not then be but…” quote by James Shapiro](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/087/james-shapiro-62910_authorship_henry-james-essay-s-closing-lines-can-ei_2514746.jpg)
