AMERICAN literature, excellent as it is by way of its poetry, is excellent much more by way of its prose. Received opinion, however, stands for the converse. Conscious that in emotion, invention, and ...

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UNLIKE M. Jourdain, who had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, I have been writing it nearly all of mine, quite consciously, and earning my living thereby since I was twenty-one ...

On The Evolution of English Prose, 1700–1800: Style, Politeness and Print Culture, by Carey McIntosh. Modern English prose is usually dated from the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. However, so ...