In the sea of books on becoming a writer and mastering one’s craft, which volumes form the life-raft? This seminar will offer critiques of a number of the classics, including E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, Edith Wharton’s The Writing of Fiction, selections from Virginia Woolf’s The First Common Reader and Henry James’s famous prefaces to the New York Edition of his books. We will talk about the value of these idiosyncratic approaches to reading and writing, and the extent to which “the cult of personality” still matters in finding a voice and courting a readership.