Who dreamt of sex with Raymond Chandler?
THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH PROSE Edited by John Gross . Oxford University Press £ 25 “Good prose,” writes John Gross in his introduction to The New Oxford Book of English Prose, “is something you can come across every day: in a letter, in a newspaper, almost anywhere.” And, for his anthology, he has sought not just to create a collection of pieces which illustrate the “resources and achievements of English prose”, but to provide, in Dr Johnson’s definition, “a collection of flowers”. John Keats is thus represented by a colourful comment in a letter to his brother, written in 1818 from his walking tour of Scotland: “The difference between our Country Dances and these Scottish figures is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup o’ Tea and beating up a batter pudding.” Ben Jonson makes a fleeting appearance because of his extraordinary (to modern readers) attempt to justify his critical comments on Shakespeare: “He flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should
