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Quote by Robert Hass

“There's very little solid research on readership, yet people make pronouncements about it all the time.”

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Robert Hass is an American poet known for his concise and profound poetry style. His works explore themes of nature, history, and the human condition, and have won numerous literary awards. more

“When Emily Dickinson's poems were published in the 1890s, they were a best-seller; the first book of her poems went through eleven editions of a print run of about 400. So the first print run out of Boston for a first book of poems was 400 for a country that had fifty million people in it. Now a first print run for a first book is maybe 2,000? So that's a five-time increase in the expectation of readership. Probably the audience is almost exactly the same size as it was in 1900, if you just took that one example.”

People Ifs Firsts Book Country Running Millions Audience Five Example Expectations Increase Size Fifty Print Boston Eleven Emily Sellers Readership Best Sellers

Author:Robert Hass

“I think one percent of the population attended college when Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost and Gertrude Stein were at Harvard. Now I think forty percent of Americans have some college education. That's an astronomical change.”

Thinking College Percent Population Forty Harvard Frost College Education Gertrude

Author:Robert Hass

“In the beginning of the 19th century, maybe forty percent of women and fifty percent of men could produce a signature, which meant that they'd had at least three years of education because it was in third grade that people started penmanship in the 19th century. And of course black people could get killed if they got caught teaching themselves to read in some parts of the country.”

People Ifs Men Years Country Three Courses Black Teaching Century Produce Percent Thirds Caught Fifty Grades Forty Black People Three Years 19th Century Signatures Third Grade Penmanship

Author:Robert Hass

“Literature, the study of literature in English in the 19th century, did not belong to literary studies, which had to do with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but instead with elocution and public speaking. So when people read literature, it was to memorize and to recite it.”

People Literature Study Century Greek Latin Public Speaking 19th Century Hebrew Elocution

Author:Robert Hass

“My suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.”

Changed Suspicion Literacy Readership

Author:Robert Hass

“My first book was published when I was thirty-two, so I think it was basically finished when I was thirty or thirty-one. And so then you think, "Well, what have you failed to do?" And my answer to myself was almost everything.”

Thinking Firsts Wells Two Book Answers Finished Thirty

Author:Robert Hass

“Prose gets divided up into fiction and nonfiction and short fiction and long fiction and autobiographical nonfiction and so on. Poetry can do any of those things except with the added definition of intensified formal pressure.”

Long Can Do Fiction Pressure Definitions Prose Divided Nonfiction Formal Fiction And Nonfiction

Author:Robert Hass

Quote by Robert Hass

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