THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION
(1846)
Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the
mechanism of 'Barnaby Rudge,' says- 'By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb
Williams' backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second
volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been
done.'
I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin- and indeed what he
himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea- but the author of
'Caleb Williams' was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a
somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be
elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the
denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or
causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development
of the intention.
There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a
thesis- or one is suggested by an incident of the day- or, at best, the author sets himself to work
in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative-designing,
generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or
action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent.
I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view- for
he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source
of interest- I say to myself, in the first place, 'Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of
which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the
present occasion, select?' Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider
whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone- whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar
tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone- afterward looking about me (or
rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of
the effect.
I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who
would- that is to say, who could- detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his
compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to
the world, I am much at a loss to say- but, perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more to do with
the omission than any one other cause. Most writers- poets in especial- prefer having it
understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy- an ecstatic intuition- and would
positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and
vacillating crudities of thought- at the true purposes seized only at the last moment- at the
innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view- at the fully-matured
fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable- at the cautious selections and rejections- at the
painful erasures and interpolations- in a word, at the wheels and pinions- the tackle for scene-
shifting- the step-ladders, and demon-traps- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black
patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary
histrio.
I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in which an author is at all
in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general,
suggestions, having arisen pell-mell are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.
For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the
least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions, and, since
the interest of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have considered a desideratum, is quite
