So -- readers who write about what they read make cap
"L" Literature. Critics are readers too (book
reviewers -- I dunno). In poetry, the most important
of these reader/writers have frequently been fellow
poets. Immediate sales are not that important. I'll
give an example from the 1820s. A poet such as A. A.
Watts outsold Shelley, and a number of folks talked
him up. But canon-constructing references to
Shelley--even tho his books were not readily for
sale--steadily increase in more weighty venues, and in
the correspondence (and presumably chat) of young
folks like Barrett, Browning, Tennyson, et alia.
David Latane
http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
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