C. S. Lewis, who seems wiser the older I get, gave a series of lectures at Cambridge after transferring there from Oxford. These became An Essay on Criticism. As professor of Renaissance and Medieval Literature he wanted to reflect on the relationship between the works he studied and what people generally read. Jane Austen, when asked what she was writing, said, “Only a novel.” Many readers are similarly apologetic. It is as if they wish to distinguish what they enjoy from literature. What is literature? Lewis suggests a rule of thumb. Literature is anything you would read again.
––Ralph McInerny, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You: My Life and Pastimes, 74
