Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Views on Q

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:58:34 +0000

This is the draft title of an eclectic collection of resources currently being prepared for publication. The selected passages cover a wide range of topics which were written at different times over the last 120 years, providing many interesting viewpoints - on Q as a person, tutor, writer, anthologist and critic.

It is intended that some items will be from such contemporaries as Frederick Brittain, Hugh Davies , A L Rowse, J C Trewin and Isaac Foot, while a number of others will have been written more recently covering a range of topics.

Some consider Q’s continued influence on English literature, both through his fiction and such books as ‘The Art of Writing’, while others examine his involvement in a wide range of aspects of life in Cornwall and how he saw its future development – for example, in education and tourism.

Serialisation and Short Stories

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:58:17 +0000

Q left his lecturing post at the University of Oxford to live and work in London in 1887. He once stated that he felt his future lay in being a writer and it was later clear that, in fact, he needed to earn more in order to pay off considerable family debts. His first novel, Dead Man’s Rock, had just been published by Cassell and was a great success but, as well as continuing to write his novels, he was also writing for Cassell’s new weekly paper, The Speaker. He clearly found that, as a writer during the latter part of the nineteenth century, an important outlet lay in the periodicals of the day. He later published some of these ‘short papers’, as he later called them, with minor changes in his first critical work Adventures Criticism (1887).

In addition to The Speaker, Q’s short stories appeared in a wide range of periodicals - including The Illustrated London News, Yule Tide, Lloyds Weekly News,The Weekly Dispatch, The Graphic, The Pall Mall, The Strand, Cassell’s Monthly, The Cornhill and others. Many are listed* in the Guides to Victorian Fiction referred to below.

He was writing prolifically and the pressure of overwork led to his illness in 1891 and the consequent family move to Fowey, his home for the rest of his life.

In 1906 he published many of his contributions to The Pall Mall Magazine in From a Cornish Window. In this year’s diary there were essays of literary criticism, light verse and comments on a wide range of contemporary affairs, which together gave an interesting ‘picture’ of Q as a person.

Noughts and Crosses (1891) was the first of his volumes of short stories, most of which had appeared in The Speaker. Collections of stories reprinted from other periodicals followed, starting in 1892 with I Saw Three Ships, and Other Winter’s Tales.

It is not difficult to realise why he was soon accorded such a high position among English short-story writers. With an incredible imagination and great technical ability, stories apparently poured off the famous pen with which he wrote everything. They ranged across a wide variety of setting, style and character study – history, romance, mystery, sadness, dialect, ghosts and humour were all used by Q. Inevitably, many were based in his beloved Cornwall while others were set far away – but always with a realistic portrayal of the ‘place’ involved.

*The Victorian Fiction Research Unit (School of English, Media Studies and Art History at The University of Queensland) publishes indexes to fiction and Guide 29 ( compiled by Graham Law) covers The Illustrated London News (1842-1901) and The Graphic (1869-1901).

New Resources

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:57:45 +0000

DVD: ‘Q – A Great Cornishman’;

This DVD was commissioned by the Trustees of a the Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch Memorial Fund and was produced in 2008 with the support of the Cornwall Council’s Media Team.

The DVD includes:
(i) brief coverage of the work of the Q Fund
(ii) a film about Q’s life and contribution to Cornwall (32 minutes)
(iii) Additional Resources including interviews with Professor Charles Thomas, A.L.Rowse (in 1987 & 1996) and others who knew Q in Fowey.
(iv) Archive Resources including a very comprehensive bibliography and a list of other resources related to Q’s life.

Available from bookshops – costing £9.99.

ambridge University Press announced the reissue of some early Q publications with the following introduction.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), who often published under the pen-name of ‘Q’, was one of the giants of early twentieth-century literature and literary criticism. A novelist and poet who was also a Professor of English, he helped to form the literary tastes of generations of literary students and scholars who came after him. The freshness, enthusiasm and intellectual insight of his work is still evident in his writings nearly a century on. Cambridge University Press is delighted to reissue some of his key texts in this set.

The complete set costs £175 while all 11 volumes (listed below) are available separately.

Volume 1: Studies in Literature; Volume 2: Poet as Citizen and Other Papers; Volume 3. Memories and Opinions; Volume 4:Studies in Literature; Volume 5: Studies in Literature; Volume 6: Adventures in Criticism; Volume 7: From a Cornish Window; Volume 8: Charles Dickens Other Victorians; Volume 9: Shakespeare’s Workmanship; Volume 10: On the Art of Writing; Volume 11: On the Art of Reading